Nancy Cartwright.

Emmy-nominated Jess Harnell is one of the top 10 voice actors in the business. With an extensive background as a rock singer, Harnell has appeared on practically every cartoon on television from The Simpsons to Fairly OddParents to Powerpuff Girls, in addition to starring roles as Captain Hero on Drawn Together and Wakko on Steven Spielberg's Animaniacs. A few of Jess's many film credits include Finding Nemo, The Country Bears, Toy Story, Cars and The Emperor's New Groove. In addition, he played both a heroic Autobot and an evil Decepticon in Transformers. He's also voiced thousands of promos and national commercials and performed in several of the top video games.

Nancy Cartwright: I want to know how you got started: tell me about your early years -- did you always want to do voice-overs?

Jess Harnell: That's a very interesting question and it's kind of a neat tale. I got started by being a rock and roll singer. You'd never guess that if you saw me, but those are my beginnings. I always was a mimic and I always loved to parrot voices, from the time when I was a little, little kid. I started by doing impressions of my family and that graduated into people I saw on TV and in movies. So, I was singing in bands and my dad, meanwhile, was a big composer for TV and film. One time he happened to mention to me that he was angry because "The Prince" (he thought Prince, the singer, was "The Prince") wanted a lot of money to use one of his songs on a TV show my dad was doing and he said he was going to have to get a sound-alike. I asked what a sound-alike was. He said, "That's when you get a guy who imitates the guy on the record and you just have to pay them a scale payment and you can use the song." I said, "Dad, I can imitate all these singers." And he said, "This isn't jumping around at the Roxy in your spandex, this is real show business." I asked him to let me try -- let me try to learn it!

NC: And you were in your 20s? Your teens?

JH: Hmm, how old was I? I was 21. Well, it wound up that I didn't do it for Prince, but my dad called me up and he said, "Have you ever heard of Glenn Fryes?" I said, "Do you mean Glenn Frey?" And he said, "Whatever! He's got a song called 'The Heat Song,' do you know 'The Heat Song?'" I was trying desperately to figure out what my father's "code" was and I said, "Do you mean 'The Heat is On?'" and he said, "Yes! Can you sing that exactly like Glenn Frey?" I said yes and he said, "Don't say that -- that's not professional -- you need to go listen to it, make sure you can and let me know and then maybe I'll hire you." That said, he said he'd call me back in a half hour and as I was saying that it wasn't enough time, he hung up on me.

NC: What did you do?

Jess Harnell.

JH: I ran to the record store, bought the record, took it home, wrote down the lyrics, even all the "woos!" and "yeahs," learned it, called him, and he told me to sing it. I put the record on in the background to sing along and he said, "No, I've heard the record, I want to hear you sing it -- sing it a cappella." Uh... OK. So I sang it to him. I finished and heard, "Hmmm… Hmmm... Alright, this might work. Be at Warner Bros. tomorrow at eight in the morning." Eight in the morning? He said, "That's right, you've got to be up early if you're going to be in show business!" So I went in, sang the thing. It went great and I began to market myself as a session singer. I knew even then how important marketing was in terms of establishing your career.

NC: How did you set about marketing yourself?

JH: I made this demo tape and I thought, what can I do to pack a punch and make my demo stand out above others? So I decided to do the song "We Are The World" and imitate everybody on the song.

NC: Oh my goodness!

JH: It was a good idea -- and even if it had sucked, it would have been interesting. Fortunately it didn't suck and I immediately began getting calls from people thinking, "This guy can do anything," which of course is never true, but the trick is not to show them the stuff you can't do.

NC: Well I know you can do Charlton Heston, because you did it on The Simpsons.

JH: (laughs) Yeah, yeah -- I do all kinds of crazy stuff. The litany is long of the stuff I can do, but, more importantly, I turned down a job on The Simpsons because they wanted me to do a horse; and I can -- but I'm not great at it. I would never say yes to something like that and then do a less-than-perfect job and walk out having them go, "I thought he was supposed to be so great." The reason people think you're invincible is that you never show them your kryptonite.

NC: Absolutely, yeah. So how did session musician become voice-over talent?

JH: Well, I made this demo and started getting a lot of work as a singer, so I'd be on the mic in the studio singing for, let's say, a beer commercial, and then the voice-over copy would be there on the script and I'd throw in, "Give yourself over to the cool taste of the Rockies," and someone said to me, "Have you ever thought about voice-over? Try the voice-over." So I started trickling into that. I also would do impressions, and one of the first jobs I got was doing looping for Pee Wee Herman because I did a good Pee Wee.