David Kaufman
David Kaufman is an actor, born 1961.
David Kaufman has one of those voices that an entire generation knows without ever attaching a name to it. Born in St. Louis in 1961, he worked on camera first, with a regular role as Duane Preston in the sitcom Down to Earth, and then moved almost entirely into animation, where he has been employed continuously ever since.
Two roles define him. He is Danny Fenton in Danny Phantom, a teenager who is half ghost, which is the lead he is most identified with. And he is Jimmy Olsen, a part he began in Superman: The Animated Series and has carried through DC's animated features for decades, including Superman: Brainiac Attacks, Superman vs. The Elite and Justice League: Doom. Very few voice actors hold a single character across that many productions and that many continuities.
The other thread is stranger and more specific: he is the standing voice double for Michael J. Fox. He played Marty McFly in the Back to the Future animated series, and the resemblance is close enough that the work has followed him around ever since. Being hired for how much you sound like somebody else is an unusual professional identity, and he has built a long career on it without being reduced to it.
The rest is range. Dexter Douglas in Freakazoid!, Aldrin in The Buzz on Maggie, the title role in Stuart Little's animated series, Wilbur in Doc McStuffins.
Movies (7)
TV (11)
Where to start with David Kaufman
Begin with Danny Phantom, the only one of these where he carries the show. It is a teenage superhero cartoon that is funnier and better written than the premise suggests, and the performance has to cover comedy, panic and adolescent sulking, frequently within one scene.
Superman: The Animated Series is where the Jimmy Olsen run starts and remains the best-made thing he has been part of, a high point of American television animation. Justice League: Doom and Superman vs. The Elite are the strongest of the DC features that followed, the second an unusually thoughtful argument about what a hero is for.
Freakazoid! is the one for comedy, an anarchic mid-1990s cartoon that has aged into a cult item. Back to the Future is the curiosity, the animated continuation where his Michael J. Fox impression became a job description. Doc McStuffins and Stuart Little: The Animated Series are the gentle children's work.