Sound Bites - Kirby Morrow

"I'd like to say I'm versatile. I hope so," Kirby Morrow says, when asked if there's a "type" of character he's typically cast for. I'm getting a lot of the young hero roles."

Indeed he is. In the new X-Men animation, X-Men Evolution, he plays Cyclops. He's also a young hero-type in Kong, Gundam Wing, and Escaflowne. But then there's Yvon of the Yukon, in which he plays a 14-year-old Inuit boy named Tommy Tukyuk, and his career in live-action film and TV, and the fact that he voiced the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Michaelangelo. It's true.

Morrow has worked in the acting sphere long enough that he's created his own web site- www.kirbymorrow.com- to list his various roles. Along with giving his industry contacts somewhere to check out his resume, he also gets the occaisional piece of fan mail through the site. "When people stumble across my web site, every once in awhile, they get a little excited. It's a lot of the Japanese animation fans. They're really interested in finding out who's behind it and stuff.

Although he's been one of the hottest new voices in anime in recent years, as yet, Morrow hasn't attended an anime convention to meet his most intereste devotees. "I haven't but I'd love to go," he says. "There was one, a comic-book convention for the Ninja Turtles, that I was invited to but I had work and I couldn't make it. One of my Ninja Turtle friends went and I got pictures and stuff. I'd like to go!

Just to get started, how did you get your start in voice acting?

Well, I started off as a stand-up comic, and I was touring around western Canada. I did a couple of shows in Australia, actually. I always did voices and had fun with voices. When I came to Vancouver, I made a voice tape and just started getting out there for the auditions.

Do you do impressions?

I do.

Any particular ones that you're especially fond of?

Sometimes I play around with a lot of popular cartoons. Like a bunch of Simpsons characters. I do Christopher Walken.

Do you have any other sort of training? Like theater or singing?

I went to theater school. I graduated at the top of my class.

Were your theater teachers happy to hear you had become a stand-up comic?

Yeah, I actually started out when I was in theater school. It paid for most of my theater school. There were times when I'd finish school for the day and I'd jump in my jeep and I'd drive and do a show and then drive back so I could make school the next day. It was kinda funny.

That's a sitcom right there. Were you a fan of animation before you got into voice-acting?

Oh absolutely. I had a little bit of the Peter Pan syndrome, always watching cartoons and never wanting to grow up. [LAUGHS]

What were some of your favorites? Or was it a general interest?

I'm a very big fan of the classic Looney Tunes, all the Elmer Fudd, Sylvester, and Bugs Bunny-type cartoons. A lot of Mel Blanc voices. Everything he voiced I used to love as a kid.

Do you find yourself trying to imitate the voices in your favorite shows?

I'm not sure if I really did back then. I know that when I was a little kid I was very popular because I could mimic E.T. [LAUGHS] when the movie first came out.

I wish I could have done that. Did you ever watch Japanese animation at all?

I never did, no. My first experience was when the movie Akira came out. ^[1]

You saw that before you started voice-acting, or was this after you started doing that?

It was much before voice-acting. That came out quite a while ago.

Aside from voice work, I was checking out your web site a couple of minutes ago- the dreamy www.kirbymorrow.com, which I'm sure all our readers will now flock to- and it says you also do live-action work as well?

Yes.

Would there be anything our readers may have seen you in?

Sure. I've been in a lot of the TV series that are done here: First Wave, Outer Limits, Stargate, Viper, Breaker High.

You were in Breaker High?

Oh, yes. I'm in their most-played episode, actually. [LAUGHS]

Which one was that?

It was called "When in Rome," and I played Felipe, the chauffeur to the guy who was pretending to be a Prince and took poor Ms. Ashley for all her money. It was a fun little episode.

Sounds like fun.

Yeah, I got to be Italian and speak in an Italian accent.

Did you get to have a big crowbar mustache or anything?

No, the young, clean-sahven "Prince" of Rome and I go [IN ITALIAN ACCENT], "No, you've got to speak like this, with the accent."

Sounds like Super Mario Brothers.

Yeah, "Luigi!"

Have you been in any movies as well?

Yes. I have a movie that I do a cameo in called MVP: Most Valuable Primate, which is about a hockey-playing monkey. [LAUGHS]

[LAUGHS] Wow! I've heard of dogs playing basketball...

It's the same creators, Keystone Entertainment. They had the dogs playing basketball and football and they said "You know what? Let's put a monkey in ice skates." So that's what they did. They asked me to come in and do a couple days on it, play some hockey. I was a little old for it so I played one of the members of the opposing team and I get to do a fight with Kevin Zegers, who's the lead in the show.

Did you get to work with the monkey at all?

I never got to actually work with him but I was there when they were out skating. It was pretty funny.

Were you not allowed to directly address the monkey? You'd have to get to its press agent if you wanted to ask him something?

[LAUGHS] Yeah. He was pretty up on himself. Hanging out in a trailer all the time, bananas everywhere- it was crazy.

Those higher primates are always givin' us trouble.

I also have a pretty good movie called Bones that's coming out around Halloween, I think. It's a horror film with Pam Grier and Snoop Doggy Dogg.

Wow! You got to work with Pam Grier? What was that like?

It was kinda nice. She's a legend, she looks fantastic, and my character doesn't get to interact with her in the movie but I was on set with her a lot.

What kind of character do you play in that movie?

I play a crack-addict college kid who takes his convertible Viper to the ghetto with $3,000 American cash to go buy some crack. I go through hell, I get attacked by a dog, a ghost is after us, rats run all over me. It's crazy.

So where does Snoop Doggy Dogg fit into this?

He is Bones. The script was designed and developed just for him, actually. He's called Bones, he grew up in the ghetto- I'm not sure how much of the plot I can give away- but it turns out he is haunting this old house where he'd been murdered and I end up trying to hide from the cops inside this house. I go through a lot of pain for it.

What was Snoop like to work with?

We were on set a lot together and mostly we dealt with the idea of him which would be done in CGI, the ghost that would be chasing us. But we were on sete together. We saw a lot of each other on the makeup chairs, "Hey, how's it going?" and he's like "cool."

Oh, okay. [LAUGHS] Wow that's really cool. Well, how would you say voice-acting work compares with live-action work?

Very different. They're both specialized skills, but voice work is definitely an element that I love about the business. Getting with other guys in the room, it's just like a group of friends that get together at a party and they're trying to outdo each other with these crazy voices, being funny, and having a blast. It's really fun to do it.

Would you say it's really similar to stand up?

Not necessarily, because you get to play off other people. It's almost like doing sketch comedy where you have a group of people and you're working off them and doing an improv kinda thing. Stand up is very much you and the material you've written and everything you say you hope people wil laugh. But sketch is pretty good, everybody's helping out, they'll give suggestions- "Maybe you should try this?", "That's a good idea."

Van in Escaflowne, that's a show that has its fair share of action and violence.

Yeah. He's slicing up dragons all over the place.

Let's talk about Van a bit. What was your impression of this character? How did you feel about him?

In the beginning there wasn't a lot of input given to us. It was hasically said, "Here's the rough idea of the story and let's just watch it and see." We watched the show in Japanese and tried to sense the characters by the way the animators had put it together. A lot of the time it's feeling it out just as you go along. We'll watch a scene and go, "He looks pretty aggressive and energetic, but he's young-looking, so let's give him this type of voice. When he attacks he's going to do this kind of yell." Then you do another scene and it's, "Well, maybe, I'm going to charge him up a bit and make him a little cooler when he says stuff." It's a lot of exploring as you go.

Did your impression of him change at all, or did you feel as you went through the series that your understanding of him matured and evolved?

I think so. And I think that's true of all animation. With any role you do, you start off with an idea, and as more information comes in and you see the images and you get him to the characters around you, you start to adapt how you think it should all come together.

How would you compare working on Escaflowne to X-Men?

It's different. It's a great element because, as an actor, you love to play as much variety as possible. That's the other beauty of voice work, I get a chance to play these types of characters that I can't play in film and television because my looks won't allow for an audience to suspend their belief in that way. I'm sure I could play a moody, quiet kind of character, but if we're talking Tommy Tukyuk, for example, I'm playing a young kid. I guess where I was going with this is there is a lot more variety and ease in playing different styles of characters with animation. I love the change and great challenge to go into these different chracters.

You also did the voice of Michaelangelo of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles?

Yeah.

You did not do the voice in the movies.

No, that was the live-action series. I did 26 episodes of that; it's still going in L.A. with Power Rangers and whatnot.

You were not the man in the suit, you were just the voice?

Yeah. All the guys in the suits, it was pretty specific, they all had to be 5'6" and they were actually a lot of friends of mine because I do a lot of gymnastics and a lot of the stunt guys were my friends that I did gymnastics with. I know one person who had gotten a role as one of the Turtles and lost it becasue his fingers were too long. It's really specific, the way you get into these suits.

Wow, did you get to go around the set at all?

I did, actually. I was dating the Venus Turtle for a while. [LAUGHS].

Oh yeah- there was a girl Turtle, wasn't there!

There's actually a picture of her and I on my web site.

Well, that's a claim to fame not many people can make, that they were actually dating a Ninja Turtle. I'd put that on my web site, I'd be very proud. Now, you said that you do gymnastics- does that mean that you yourself might do something like that in the future? Action-oriented or stunt-oriented?

Well when I did the TV show Viper, it was a lot of fun because the stunt coordinator knew me and let me do a few things. I got to jump off a balcony onto a parked car and do a lot of running while the Viper chased me and -insert my stunt double- he gets hit by the Viper and I actually dove over the car and made it look as if it were me. [LAUGHS] He took the brunt of the impact.

Who were you in Viper?

My name was Tim, I was a small-time coin thief.

It also said that you worked on a Jackie Chan video game?

Yeah the video game Jackie Chan Stuntmaster.

What was that like?

It was interesting. It's a funny story. I got called in for the audition, I raced there and I was almost running late so I parked at a parking meter and ran inside for the audition and they had pages and pages of dialogue and all these characters they wanted me to try. I started doing these characters, there was the French guy and the big thug and all these different characters, and they decided in the room that I was good enough to do the job. So they said "Oh, okay, this guy's got the job," but they never told me that so I went to do a whole audition that lasted over and hour, doing all these lines and they had been recording everything.

Did you get to meet Mr. Chan at all, or was he not involved?

No, unfortunately he wasn't there.

Well, would you say that you have a favorite voice role that you've played over the years?

Hmmmm. One really fun one I did was Brats of the Lost Nebula and that was a Jim Henson show. It was only on the air for one season, which was too bad because it was stuck in the wrong age category. In Canada they played it for 7-year-olds, which was a huge market difference. Seven-year-olds couldn't understand it, so Warner Brothers dropped it. In Canada we had higher ratings here than they did in the States. The show was really fun and working on a Henson show with actual Muppets. It was kind of a Muppets do Star Wars type of deal. I played this 14-year-old badass guy named Venom, the leader of this young group of renegades who were fighting a war in the Nebula Alliance. It was good fun.

Can you think of the strangest role you've had to play?

I just did Picolet on Ranma. He was the one in the martial-arts eatery who sucks all the food up really fast and what he does is hit people on the head and then engulfs their entire head. ^[2]

Do you have any words of advice for any aspiring voice-actors out there?

The best thing I can say is play and have fun and don't ever feel foolish. Any voice you can come up with is a good voice- it doesn't matter if you like it or not. If you think you have a bad voice you'd be surprised. People work because they have unique voices.

Fan mail for Kirby Morrow can be sent to:
Kirby Morrow
Lauren Levitt and Associates
3rd Floor 1525 West 8th Avenue
Vancouver B.C. Canada V6J 1T5

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Footnotes

• [1]Akira was considered the gateway anime for an entire generation of Western fans of Japanese animation. It received its original release in Japan in 1988 and debuted in the United States at the end of 1989.
• [2] This interview takes place before the Inuyasha anime debuted therefore before Kirby Morrow was cast in perhaps his most well-known role, Miroku. When this interview took place his Japanese animation roles included: Goku in a single episode of Dragon Ball Z, Van Fanel in The Vision of Escaflowne, Trowa Barton in Gundam Wing, Picolet Chardin II in Ranma 1/2 and Akira in Z-Mind.

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