Michael Bell
Michael Bell is an actor, born 1938.
Anyone who watched American cartoons between 1980 and 2000 heard Michael Bell several hundred times without ever learning his name. He started on camera, in bit parts stretching back to a 1967 crime thriller, with credits on Ironside, Three's Company and other network staples, but the career is in voice booths, and it is enormous.
The specialty is multiplicity. On The Transformers he voiced Prowl, Bombshell, Sideswipe and Swoop. On G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero he was Duke and Xamot, hero and villain on the same show. On Rugrats he played both Drew Pickles and Chas Finster, which means two of the show's fathers arguing is one man doing both halves of the conversation. Add Handy Smurf, Zan in Super Friends, Lance and Sven in Voltron, Quackerjack in Darkwing Duck, Pal Joey in Gargoyles and the Grundle in a My Little Pony feature, and you have the sound of Saturday morning across two decades.
He never developed the single signature voice that makes a voice actor famous, and that is the point: he was hired for range and speed, the ability to fill several roles in one session and make each of them sound like a different actor. The video game work, including the Legacy of Kain series, gave him darker material than the cartoons ever did. His credits here run from that 1967 thriller to a Star Wars animated series in 2025, which is a remarkable stretch in a field that usually forgets people.
Movies (24)
- Tangled (2010)
- Tom and Jerry: The Movie (1993)
- Home on the Range (2004)
- The Transformers: The Movie (1986)
- The Rugrats Movie (1998)
- Rugrats in Paris: The Movie (2000)
- Rugrats Go Wild (2003)
- Homeward Bound II: Lost in San Francisco (1996)
- Scooby-Doo! and the Loch Ness Monster (2004)
- Point Blank (1967)
- The New Adventures of Pippi Longstocking (1988)
- Alvin and the Chipmunks Meet Frankenstein (1999)
- My Little Pony: The Movie (1986)
- G.I. Joe: The Movie (1987)
- My Soul to Take (2010)
- Rollercoaster (1977)
- Tongues Untied (1990)
- How to Beat the High Cost of Living (1980)
- The Flintstones: Hollyrock a Bye Baby (1993)
- It Waits (2005)
- GoBots: Battle of the Rock Lords (1986)
- Rockin' with Judy Jetson (1988)
- The Little Troll Prince (1987)
- The Pyramid of Darkness: The Further Adventures of G.I. Joe (1985)
TV (46)
- Rugrats (1991)
- The Smurfs (1981)
- Ironside (1967)
- Three's Company (1977)
- The Batman (2004)
- The Transformers (1984)
- Gargoyles (1994)
- G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero (1983)
- Aladdin (1994)
- Darkwing Duck (1991)
- TaleSpin (1990)
- Chip 'n' Dale Rescue Rangers (1989)
- Super Friends (1973)
- Tiny Toon Adventures (1990)
- All Grown Up! (2003)
- Snorks (1984)
- The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest (1996)
- Saber Rider and the Star Sheriffs (1987)
- Scooby-Doo and Scrappy-Doo (1979)
- Goof Troop (1992)
- Petrocelli (1974)
- Droopy, Master Detective (1993)
- W.I.T.C.H. (2004)
- The Centurions (1986)
- The New Scooby-Doo Movies (1972)
- Superman (1988)
- SWAT Kats: The Radical Squadron (1993)
- Oh Yeah! Cartoons (1998)
- Sonic the Hedgehog (1993)
- Rambo: The Force of Freedom (1986)
Where to start with Michael Bell
Put on The Transformers. It is the show where the sheer number of characters he plays becomes audible once you listen for it. The Transformers: The Movie is the better-made version, louder and unexpectedly grim, and it is the one that made a generation cry.
Rugrats is where his range gets a real workout: Drew and Chas are opposite temperaments and he plays their arguments alone in a booth. G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero is the other pillar, and G.I. Joe: The Movie is the strange feature-length spin on it. For the lighter end, Darkwing Duck gives him a proper comic villain in Quackerjack, and The Smurfs gives him Handy, the small part more people have heard than could name. Gargoyles is the best-written show on the list by a distance.
The eighties toy shows
Duke and Prowl in the same career, which for a certain generation is the whole resume. These shows were made fast and cheap to sell plastic, and the voice cast is the reason any of them are still watchable now.
The Rugrats years
He plays two of the fathers, Drew and Chas, and they sound like different people, which is the whole trick of a career like this. Three feature films came out of it and the series ran for most of a decade.
The Saturday morning catalogue
Four decades of American animation with him somewhere in the cast list. Gargoyles holds up best as writing, Darkwing Duck gives him Quackerjack, and the Super Friends work goes back to when this industry was barely an industry.