Dan Castellaneta, the actor most famous for being the voice of Homer Simpson, was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1957. Just like most people who grow up to be voice actors, he was doing celebrity impersonations from a young age, but by the time he was a teenager it was practically at a professional skill level. He even enrolled in acting classes when he was 16, although when he reached college age he decided to pursue art education with the intention of becoming an art teacher. When he did begin teaching, even his students liked his voice impressions!

While studying at Northern Illinois University in the 1970s he got involved in their radio show and brought his vocal skills with him, performing sketches regularly while honing his ability to switch between different character voices on the fly. This experience gave him the confidence to audition for improvisational shows, which he also excelled at, pursuing that career path more seriously upon his graduation from NIU in 1979, which eventually led him to Chicago’s most famous improv theatre The Second City, where he performed on stage from 1983 to 1987.

At the same time Castellaneta’s stage career was taking off, the broadcast television network FOX was getting off the ground and one of their first projects was a sketch comedy vehicle for comedian Tracey Ullman called The Tracey Ullman Show (1987-90). While searching for cast members to join the show, the producers scouted Second City and asked Castellaneta to audition. Although he initially underwhelmed Ullman with his first addition, she changed her mind when he flew to Chicago to see him perform in front of an audience. Interestingly, it was not Castellaneta’s comedy that won Ullman over but rather his emotional and sincere acting skills.

He started performing his most famous role when the Simpsons were introduced on The Tracey Ullman Show as interstitial animated segments. The dysfunctional cartoon family was created by underground artist and Life in Hell creator Matt Groening and the characters were so popular that they eventually got their own spin-off series called The Simpsons, which first aired on FOX in 1989 and has since become one of the longest running television series ever made and one of the most popular shows in television history with Homer becoming one of the most popular dads in television history. Castellaneta started out voicing Homer in a gruff and short-tempered manner before morphing it into the more dimwitted tone that fans recognize today. Due to the show’s huge popularity and the anonymity that comes from being a voice actor, Dan Castellaneta might be the most famous person no one recognizes.

In addition to Homer, Castellaneta also provides the voices for a lot of other Springfield residents, including Homer’s father Abe Simpson aka Grampa, Barney Gumble, Groundskeeper Willie, Hans Moleman, Gil Gunderson, Mayor Quimby, Krusty the Clown and Sideshow Mel, not to mention the cartoon character Itchy and the space alien Kodos. Castellaneta offered a lot of his own input into shaping many of these characters. For example it was Catellaneta’s idea to give Willie a Scottish accent, make Quimby sound like a Kennedy, give Krusty his raspy voice (influenced by Bozo the Clown) and inspire the Simpsons producers to make Gil Gunderson a recurring character instead of a one-off character based on how much Castellaneta made everybody laugh in the recording booth with the way he channeled Jack Lemmon from Glengarry Glen Ross.

Dan Castellaneta won the Primetime Emmy Award four different times over the course of the show’s run for his portrayal of Homer, and he has also offered his creative input on many episodes. He and his wife Deb Lacusta (who is also an improv actor who got her start in the eighties alongside Castellaneta) wrote several episodes together, including the Season 17 episode “Kiss Kiss, Bang Bangalore” which was nominated for a Writers Guild of America Award. Castellaneta eventually became a consulting producer and a co-executive producer on The Simpsons.

The second-most prominent role Dan Castellaneta returns to most often is the Disney character Genie, who he first voiced in the straight-to-video Aladdin sequel The Return of Jafar (1994) and reprised throughout the entire run of Aladdin: The Series (1994-95) as well as video games like Aladdin in Nasira’s Revenge and Kingdom Hearts and a few Disney theme park attractions. Castellaneta has called stepping into the role of Genie after Robin Williams voiced him the equivalent of “stepping into Hamlet after Laurence Olivier did it” and he has expressed how challenging that can be, but he brings the same sharp wit and sincerity to Genie that he brings to all his characters and I always felt he was funny and highly underrated in that role.

In addition to Homer and Genie, Castellaneta has voiced animated characters like Mister Thickley the wallaby from Taz-Mania, the supervillain Megavolt from Darkwing Duck, Doc Brown from Back to the Future, Earthworm Jim, Grandpa Phil Shortman from Hey Arnold!, Earl from Cow and Chicken and the Robot Devil from Futurama in addition to lending his voice to shows like TaleSpin, Animaniacs, The Pink Panther, The Tick, Rugrats, Johnny Bravo, Histeria!, Detention, Buzz Lightyear of Star Command, Batman Beyond, Lloyd in Space, Kim Possible, Justice League, The Batman, What’s New, Scooby-Doo?, My Life as a Teenage Robot and the live-action sitcom Brockmire starring fellow Simpsons actor Hank Azaria. Castellaneta would also re-team with Matt Groening when he voiced the evil Postman in the Emmy-nominated animated Christmas special Olive, the Other Reindeer (1999).

After making his television debut in The Tracey Ullman Show, Castellaneta would also appear on screen in a ton of TV shows often in guest roles, some of the most popular shows being ALF, Married… with Children, L.A. Law, Murphy Brown, Friends, NYPD Blue, Cybill, The Drew Carey Show, Everybody Loves Raymond, Mad About You, Nash Bridges, Frasier, That ’70s Show, Stargate SG-1, Arrested Development, Veronica Mars, Entourage, Greek, Monk, Reno 911!, Castle, Ghost Whisperer, How I Met Your Mother, Bones, Desperate Housewives, Parks and Recreation, The Office, The Mindy Project, The League, Hot in Cleveland and 9-1-1: Lone Star in addition to appearing in a few well-known films like Nothing in Common, Say Anything…, The War of the Roses, The Client, Space Jam, The Pursuit of Happyness, Superhero Movie and Super 8.

Castellaneta occasionally returns to his roots as a stage performer, like when he created his one-man play Where Did Vincent Van Gogh? Plus, as anyone who watched The Simpsons, The Return of Jafar and Olive, the Other Reindeer knows, he can sing really well too, and he occasionally indulges in that part of his talent pool, like when he recorded his music album Two Lips. But he also recorded a comedy album called I Am Not Homer (a parody of the name of  Leonard Nimoy’s autobiography I Am Not Spock) which featured a variety of sketches that Castellaneta has performed over the years that he thought were funny enough to compile into an album, many of which Simpsons fans who only know him for voicing Homer may be surprised by. That venture took him full circle in a way, because back when he was a teenage impressionist in Illinois, he used to impersonate the comedians on his father’s comedy records. He hasn’t stopped making people laugh since.