Cartoon voice actor Joe Alaskey arrives at the premiere of "Looney Tunes: Back in Action" at the Chinese Theater on Nov. 9, 2003, in Los Angeles, Calif. Photo Credit: Getty Images / Kevin Winter
Joe Alaskey lived through his characters. "Even at 3 years old," he once said, "I was always looking for a pair of sunglasses or people's cigar butts to grab to do characters, and that led into me working on impressions, and that led into theater."
The impressionist and Emmy award-winning voice actor who succeeded Mel Blanc as Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck died from cancer Wednesday in New York. Alaskey was 63.As himself, Alaskey was a jovial, energetic jack-of-all-trades. But he could be just about anyone else.
Over the course of his lifetime, he lent his voice to some of animation's greatest hits. He became one of the principal actors on the Looney Tunes after Blanc's death in 1989, voicing not only Bugs and Daffy, but virtually all the characters, including Sylvester the Cat and Tweety Bird. Alaskey also played Yosemite Sam in "Who Framed Roger Rabbit," both his first major film and a seminal work in live-action animation.
Before he was recognized as a sonic sensation, however, he had envisioned himself in a variety of other jobs - perhaps a telling glimpse into the shape-shifter that he would become.