David Kaye

David V. Hope (born October 14, 1964), better known by his stage name, David Kaye, is a Canadian born American actor who is most active in voice overs. His most recognized roles include Sesshomaru in the shōnen anime InuYasha, Treize Khushrenada in Mobile Suit Gundam Wing, Megatron in five of the Transformers series (Beast Wars, Beast Machines, Transformers: Armada, Transformers: Energon, and Transformers: Cybertron), Cronus in Class of the Titans, and Clank in the Ratchet & Clank series of video games as well as the feature film Ratchet & Clank. His voice is featured in the Academy Award-winning Disney/Pixar movie Up and he is also the in-show announcer for Last Week Tonight with John Oliver on HBO. Career During the 1980s, he attended the New York Academy of Dramatic Arts after which he starred in plays such as Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, where he played George and Harvey, where he played Elwood P. Dowd. David Kaye’s voice over career began in 1989 with General Hawk in the DIC animation series G.I. Joe. Working as an on air talent for radio station CKLG (LG73), he quickly became less interested as both on camera and behind the mic roles started taking up more time. Over the next decade and a half, David’s on camera burgeoned along with his voice career. On camera opportunities came in the form of guest roles on numerous TV series and movies such as The X-Files, Battlestar Galactica, and Happy Gilmore with Adam Sandler. Also during this time Kaye was being cast in some of the first of hundreds of animation shows and video games. So many, in fact, this now became the main focus of his career. David’s biggest moment was when he was cast as Megatron in 1994 in the immensely popular series Transformers. As a new animation art form was taking off bolstered by Mainframe Entertainment, Beast Wars was born (Beasties in Canada) and would run for four seasons of “…the most fun you could ever have!” says David. Thus began an almost a twenty-year relationship with the Transformers franchise. In 2007, David crossed over to become the first actor in the history of the franchise to play the lead villain and the lead hero when he was cast as Optimus Prime for Cartoon Network’s Transformers: Animated. He lent his voice to Hammerstrike in Transformers: Robots in Disguise, making it the eighth Transformers cartoon he's worked on, more than any other actor in the franchise. Once again, David finds himself returning to a franchise he first engaged in years before, this time going back to the beginning with G.I. Joe: not only can he be heard as Scarlett’s father, but also introducing every episode as the expo voice during the opening titles. For Anime fans, Kaye has been the voice behind Sesshomaru in the English dubbed Inuyasha series, Treize Khushrenada in Mobile Suit Gundam Wing, Recoome in Dragon Ball Z (1996-1998), and as the high strung father Soun Tendo in Ranma 1/2. His anime work still brings fans to conventions to meet him. As the work keeps coming in, David’s voice can be heard in Insomniac Games' Ratchet & Clank video game series as the loveable robot Clank. He’s also been featured in Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions as Mysterio, Nick Fury and Captain America in Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2, and many more. David, at that point, landed a role as a newsreel announcer in Disney/Pixar’s Oscar-winning movie Up. David is now a full-time Los Angeles based voice artist. He has been working on Ben 10 Omniverse as the villain, Khyber, with J. G. Quintel on Regular Show as Reginald the giant baby, playing J.A.R.V.I.S. (and other characters) on Avengers Assemble, and Clay, F-Bot and Chase Young on Xiaolin Chronicles.