Billy West
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Birth name
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William Richard Werstine
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Birth date
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April 16, 1952 |
Birth place
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Detroit, Michigan
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Years active
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1980 - present
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Spouse
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Violet West (divorced)
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William Richard Werstine (born on April 16th, 1952) professionally known as Billy West, is an American voice actor, comedian, singer, musician, songwriter, and former radio personality, who is best know for his roles on The Ren & Stimpy Show, M&M's commercials and Futurama.
Ren and Stimpy
Initially, he was going to voice Ren and Stimpy, but they decided that two voices was too much for him, so he voiced the latter instead; after John Kricfalusi left, he voiced both of them as was originally planned.
He co-wrote the episode "Ol' Blue Nose".
Billy West voiced Stimpy throughout the course of the series, and replaced John Kricfalusi as the voice actor for Ren when John was fired after Season 2, although several episodes in the later part of Season 2 had Ren voiced by Billy West.
Trivia
- West also reprised his role for Stimpy in the video game Nicktoons: Attack of the Toybots.
- West chose not to return for Ren and Stimpy "Adult Party Cartoon", as he did not like the series himself, believing that involvement of it would damage his career and predicted that the series would end very soon (to which his prediction came true since the series only lasted for six episodes).
- In addition, he has since refused to work with or have anything to do with John Kricfalusi following a series of bad experiences with him both on and off the production of original series and an embarrassing appearance with him on the Howard Stern show, where Howard Stern brought both of them in to cause more friction.
- One bad experience was that Kricfalusi demanded and attempted to manipulate West into quiting the series alongside him so that Nickelodeon would hire him back, but West could not afford to lose his job as a voice actor and even if he did quit, he knew that such attempt would fail and both he and Kricfalusi would have been blacklisted.