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Date of Birth: David Kaye14 October 1964A man of a thousand voices - and a growing number of faces - actor David Kaye was already a radio professional by the age of 16. Working summers and weekends during his high school years in Peterborough, Ontario, he dropped his plans for a psychology degree to pursue a full-time career on-air. Kaye's breakthrough came as a radio personality on a station in London, Ontario, and he followed that with a move to Vancouver's CKLG. There he handled every shift before joining the popular "Morning Zoo"... crew, for which he came up with zany characters like the drawling "Cowboy Dick" and "Stunt Boy" with the latter providing him an excuse for remote broadcasts from odd locations. Writing and improvising material for the Zoo soon gave him a taste for more challenging fare, so he undertook acting studies. Kaye has since worked non-stop as a voice actor. He began by supplying vocal personalities to cartoon characters on series like G.I. Joe (the Canadian's first cartoon character was as the "great American hero" General Hawk!), _"G.I. Joe Extreme" (1995)_ (qv); David played the infamous Megatron on _"Beast Wars: Transformers" (1996)_ (qv) (also Beast Machines; Beasties; Transformers Armada); D'Myna League (Barry), Kleo The Misfit Unicorn (his character Slim shares star-billing with a character voiced by Mickey Rooney), _"StreetFighter: The Animated Series" (1997)_ (Akuma), _"Kong: The Animated Series" (2000)_ (qv) (Ramone De La Porta), _"Exosquad" (1993)_ (qv) (Hallas, Draconis) a series directed by Gordon Hunt (Helen Hunt's, of Mad About You fame, father). He was also cast as Akela The Wolf in _"Jungle Book Shonen Mowgli" (1989)_, starring 'Charleton Heston' as the narrator, and is the narrator himself on MGM/Sony's _"Bible Story" (1998)_ (qv) series. And that was just the very beginning of his career. Fast-forward now through over a hundred characters to his most recent ones and you get to the voice of Professor Xavier on WB Kid's animated _"X-Men: Evolution" (2000)_ (qv) series; Major Powers for Hasbro's toy 'Major Powers'; Dragon, in Mattel's new cartoon Barbie as Rapunzel; Clank, in the popular Playstation 2 game, 'Ratchet and Clank'; Sesshoumara in the new hot anime _"Inuyasha" (2000)_ (qv); and he's still Megatron, this time on _"Transuf?m?: Maikuron densetsu" (2002)_ (qv). Finally, fulfilling another lifelong ambition, David Kaye recently received his first paycheck from "the mouse", for a Disney Christmas project 'Mickey Mouse's Twice Upon A Christmas'. And this breakdown of characters only touches the list of voices Kaye has provided in animation ... a list impressive enough to land top talent agency, William Morris in both L.A. and in New York. But more than 'toon-town beckoned. As part of North Vancouver's First Impressions theatre company, Kaye landed key roles in classic plays such as Noises Off, Of Mice and Men, Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?, A Streetcar Named Desire (he played Stanley Kowalski), and Harvey (he played Elwood P. Dowd). Early television auditions yielded supporting roles in the series Northwood and M.A.N.T.I.S., and in TV-movies like Someone Else's Child and Zalinda's Story for ABC's Lifetime. On the big screen, he was often cast - not too surprisingly - as TV reporters (in Tailhook, Sliders, and Adam Sandler's Happy Gilmore, among others, he played glib commentators). Over the past six years, however, he has been recognized for his growing skills with lead, co-starring and guest starring roles in The Outer Limits, So Weird, The Sentinel, Viper, Dead Man's Gun, The Twilight Zone; features such as Carpool, Prisoner Of Zenda Inc., Dead Like Me and the TV movies Murder In My Mind, Ladies and the Champs, MVP II: Most Valuable Primate, and Live From Baghdad. He performed the lead role in The Love Charm, a half-hour independent film which won the Best Short Film Award at the Leo Awards (Vancouver). The actor also co-starred in the TV movie Prince of Mirrors: The Rich Donato Story, and Mermaid (starring Ellen Burstyn) in which he played a supporting lead role. The six-foot, brown-haired Kaye comes by his flamboyance naturally, since he counts Captain Blood - the infamous model for Errol Flynn's most swashbuckling role - as one of his family ancestors.Read more |
