David Kaye (voice actor)


David V. Hope, better known by his stage name David Kaye, is a Canadian-American voice actor. He is best known for his roles in animation, including Megatron in five of the Transformers TV series, Optimus Prime in ', Professor X and Apocalypse in X-Men Evolution, Cronus in Class of the Titans, Khyber and Shocksquatch in ', several characters in Avengers Assemble and Reginald in Regular Show. He is also well known for his anime roles and his video game roles. His voice is also featured in the Academy Award-winning Disney/Pixar film Up and is the announcer for Last Week Tonight with John Oliver on HBO. Kaye also voices the character of Duckworth in the cartoon series DuckTales .

Career

During the 1980s, Kaye moved to Vancouver to work in radio. He also did theater, starring in plays such as Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, where he played George and Harvey, where he played Elwood P. Dowd.
Kaye's voice-over career began in 1989 with General Hawk in the DiC animated series '. Working as an on-air talent for radio station CKLG, he quickly became less interested as both on camera and behind the mic roles started taking up more time. 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.
During this time, Kaye was cast in several animation shows and video games, including a role as Megatron in '. This began an almost a twenty-year relationship with the Transformers franchise. In 2007, he become the first, and as of 2020 only, actor in the franchise to play both Megatron and Optimus Prime in regular roles, voicing the latter for Cartoon Network's '. Kaye also lent his voice to the later series ' and '.
In anime, 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 and as Soun Tendo in Ranma ½. His involvement in anime has led to several appearances at conventions.
Kaye became a Los Angeles based voice artist. He has worked on ' as the villain Khyber, with J. G. Quintel on Regular Show as Reginald, and Clay Bailey, F-Bot & Chase Young on Xiaolin Chronicles. He is voicing several characters on the Avengers Assemble animated series and Max Tennyson in the reboot of Ben 10.
He shared the role of the Stretch Monster with Miguel Ferrer in Stretch Armstrong and the Flex Fighters, and also took over in the late actor's role of Vandal Savage in .
Alongside conventional voicework, Kaye also narrates movie trailers, network promo for ABC, Fox, The CW, National Geographic, TLC, FX and other commercial work.

Filmography

Animation