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Producer · Actor

1964-04-25 · Queens, New York City, New York, USA · Male

42 series in the catalog

Henry Albert Azaria ( ə-ZAIR-ee-ə; born April 25, 1964) is an American actor and producer. He is known for voicing many characters in the animated sitcom The Simpsons since 1989, including Moe Szyslak, Chief Wiggum, Superintendent Chalmers, Comic Book Guy, Snake, Professor Frink, Kirk Van Houten, Duffman, Apu Nahasapeemapetilon, Lou, and Carl Carlson, among others. Azaria joined the show with little voice acting experience, but became a regular in its second season. For his work on the show, he has won four Primetime Emmy Awards.

Alongside his continued voice acting on The Simpsons, Azaria became more widely known through his live-action supporting appearances in films such as Quiz Show (1994), Heat (1995), The Birdcage (1996) (for which he won a Screen Actors Guild Award) and Godzilla (1998). He has also appeared in numerous films including Mystery Men (1999), America's Sweethearts (2001), Shattered Glass (2003), Along Came Polly (2004), Run Fatboy Run (2007), Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian (2009) and The Smurfs (2011) and The Smurfs 2 (2013). Further voice roles include Anastasia (1997), for which he won an Annie Award.

Azaria's live-action television work includes recurring roles on the sitcoms Mad About You and Friends, as well as dramatic roles in the TV films Tuesdays with Morrie (1999) as writer Mitch Albom and Uprising (2001) as Jewish resistance leader Mordechai Anielewicz. For the former, Azaria received the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Limited Series or Movie. He starred in the title roles in the Showtime drama series Huff (2004–2006) and the IFC sitcom Brockmire (2017–2020). His recurring role on the drama Ray Donovan earned him a sixth Primetime Emmy Award in 2016.

Azaria made his Broadway debut as Lancelot in Spamalot, for which he was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical. He returned to Broadway in 2007, playing David Sarnoff in The Farnsworth Invention.

Early life and education

Henry Albert Azaria was born in the Queens borough of New York City on April 25, 1964, to Ruth and Albert Azaria. He began going by the name "Hank" as a child, after a pediatrician he visited said he felt it was a more suitable name for a child than "Henry". His paternal grandparents were Sephardic Jews from Salonika and Smyrna. His paternal grandfather, Herman Azaria, came from Salonika which was then in the Ottoman Empire, today the Greek city of Thessaloniki in Greek Macedonia. His paternal grandmother, Sarah (née Corkidi) was born in Bergama, modern-day Turkey (Izmir Province).

His family spoke Ladino, also known as Judaeo-Spanish, which he described as "a strange, antiquated Spanish dialect written in Hebrew characters." Azaria's father ran several dress-manufacturing businesses while his mother raised him and his two older sisters, Stephanie and Elise. Before marrying his father, Azaria's mother had been a publicist for Columbia Pictures, promoting films in Latin American countries as she was fluent in both English and Spanish. During his childhood, Azaria would often "memorize and mimic" the scripts of films, shows, and stand-up comedy routines he enjoyed.

Azaria attended The Kew-Forest School in Queens' Forest Hills neighborhood. He decided to become an actor after performing in a school play at the age of 16, becoming "obsessed with acting" at the expense of his academic studies. Both of his parents loved all forms of show business, which further spurred him to become an actor. He studied drama at Tufts University from 1981 to 1985, where he met and befriended actor Oliver Platt and noted that Platt was a "better actor" than he was and inspired him. Together they starred in various college stage productions, including The Merchant of Venice, before Azaria went to train at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts.

Although he did not expect the endeavor to be successful, he decided to become a professional actor so that he would not regret not having tried later in life. His first acting job was an advertisement for Italian television when he was 17 years old. He also worked as a busboy. He originally intended to work predominantly as a theatrical actor, and he and Platt set up a company called Big Theatre, although Harold Pinter's The Dumb Waiter was the only show they ever performed. Azaria decided that television was a better arena and offered more opportunity, and moved to Los Angeles after being offered work with talent agent Harry Gold.

Career

Early career (1986–1988)

Azaria got along with talent agent Harry Gold, who was lukewarm about working with him but still sent him out for auditions after a woman Azaria had worked with in New York "got really furious with [Gold]" for breaking his promise to work with Azaria. He made his television debut with a role in the pilot episode of the 1986 ABC comedy-drama series Joe Bash. His part—a one-line role as the police officer Maldonado—was edited out before the show was broadcast, although the role secured him admission to the Screen Actors Guild.

Azaria appeared in the TV film Nitti: The Enforcer, about the gangster Frank Nitti, and appeared in the failed pilot Morning Maggie alongside Matthew Perry, with whom he became good friends. He played Joe in an episode of the sitcom Family Ties in 1988 in which he had one line, and the following year he played Steve Stevenson in an episode of Growing Pains. Azaria has described his career progression as being gradual; he did not achieve overnight recognition or fame. In Los Angeles, Azaria was trained by acting coach Roy London. Between acting jobs he performed as a stand-up comedian, and worked as a bartender for a catering firm.

The Simpsons (since 1989)

Azaria is known for his voice work in the ongoing animated television series The Simpsons. He joined the show having previously performed only one voice acting job—as the titular animated dog in the failed Fox pilot Hollywood Dog, a show he described as "sort of Roger Rabbit-esque, where the dog was animated, but everybody else was real." The first voice he performed on The Simpsons was that of town bartender Moe Szyslak, replacing Christopher Collins who had initially recorded the character's voice. Having known him from Hollywood Dog, casting director Bonita Pietila called Azaria and asked him to audition for the voice of Moe.

At the time he was performing the role of a drug dealer in a play, utilizing a voice based on Al Pacino's performance in the film Dog Day Afternoon. He used the voice in his audition for The Simpsons and, at the request of the show's executive producers Matt Groening and Sam Simon, made the voice more "gravelly". Groening and Simon thought the resultant voice was ideal for Moe and took Azaria over to the Fox recording studio. Before he had even seen a script, he recorded several lines of dialogue as Moe for the episode "Some Enchanted Evening", dubbing Collins' voice.

Azaria did not expect to hear from the show again, but they continued to call him back, first to perform the voice of Chief Wiggum and then Apu Nahasapeemapetilon. He felt that, initially, "[the producers] didn't seem too pleased with what I had done...[Simon] was very exacting...[and] was kind of impatiently directing me on the ABCs of comedy. But then, much to my surprise, he would still keep having me back every week. But each week, I thought it was going to be my last week because I really didn't think I had done that well." By the show's second season he was performing multiple recurring voices and so was given a contract and made a permanent member of the main cast. Since he joined later than the rest of the cast, Groening still considered Azaria the "new guy".

In addition to Moe, Wiggum and Apu, Azaria provides the voices of Comic Book Guy, Carl Carlson (until season 32, now voiced by Alex Désert), Cletus Spuckler, Professor Frink, Dr. Nick Riviera, Lou, Snake Jailbird, Kirk Van Houten, Bumblebee Man, the Sea Captain, Superintendent…