PHIL PROCTOR - 2020

Phil was born of Amish/Irish ancestry in Goshen, Indiana and his God-given musical and linguistic talents (he speaks 7 languages) have taken him from Broadway, where he appeared in The Sound of Music and A Time for Singing, and Off-Broadway and L.A. in The Amorous Flea, across the U.S. and Canada, to Europe, and even to the former Soviet Union with the legendary Yale Russian Chorus.

He started as a child actor on live television in New York and went on to win a Theatre World award, be cited as Best Actor by the LA Free Press for John Guare’s Muzeeka at the Mark Taper Forum, receive 3 Grammy nominations with The Firesign Theatre and shared 3 daytime Emmies for voicing Howard DeVille on Rugrats, with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, as well as sharing several Academy Awards for his participation in the animé Spirited Away as well as numerous Disney and Pixar movies.

Locally, Phil has received multiple L.A. Weekly awards as a featured member of the Antaeus Classical Theatre Company in The Crucible, Mother Courage, American Tales, The Man Who Had All the Luck by Arthur Miller, Chekhov x Four, Noel Coward’s Peace in our Time, The Curse of Oedipus and The Cripple of Inishman. He also garnered a Garland for his work in Samuel Warren Joseph’s play, Window of Opportunity and played multiple roles in Sam Bobrick’s comedy, L.A. Deli at the Marilyn Monroe Theatre in Hollywood.

Besides being the announcer on the reality show Big Brother for 3 seasons, he’s supplied voices for countless commercials, interactive games, including the deceptive computer in Headlander and the evil Dr. Vidic in Assassin’s Creed, and for audio books in L. Ron Hubbard’s Golden Age of Pulp Fiction series for Galaxy Press and several characters in the award-winning Battlefield Earth.

You can also hear him as Detective Polehaus on the long-running international radio serial, Adventures in Odyssey, but he is most widely recognized as the drunken French Monkey in Eddie Murphy’s Dr. Dolittle series, Seahorse Bob in Finding Nemo, Charlie in Monsters, Inc., and most recently in Pixar’s Inside Out.

His film, TV and stage appearances are too numerous to list; but Philip can be seen in Samuel Joseph’s dark political thriller, Window of Opportunity produced by The Doors’ John Densmore, as well as in Henry Jaglom’s first film, Safe Place with Tuesday Wells, Orson Welles and Jack Nicholson and later in Hollywood Dreams and Queen of the Lot; and he’s proud to have worked with his talented wife, Melinda Peterson, in Love Addict, The Selling and The Independent, starring Jerry Stiller.

With the Firesign Theatre 4-man group -- listed as one of the “Thirty Greatest Acts of All Time” by Entertainment Magazine -- he’s appeared for over a half-a-century on LPs, CDs, DVDs and on stage, TV and screen in Zachariah, God’s Clowns, Everything You Know is Wrong, Hot Shorts, The Madhouse of Dr. Fear with Don Adams, and as Proctor & Bergman in their overdubbed Republic cliffhanger cult hit, J-Men Forever – and now, a 7-hour collection of the group’s on-screen appearances is available in a 2-DVD set entitled Everything You Know is Wrong! The Declassified Firesign Theatre.

In 2001-02 Firesign created Fools in Space, a monthly 2-hour live show on XM Satellite Radio which won the NY International Radio Festival’s Golden Award for Best Continuing Comedy Series while also seen in Weirdly Cool, a one-hour PBS Special, hosted by fans like the late Robin Williams and George Carlin, John Goodman and Chevy Chase.

Before Peter Bergman’s and Phil Austin’s demise, they continued to enjoy sold-out tours of West Coast Arts Centers and recorded a live performance at the London Comedy Store for BBC4 radio, featuring Mort Sahl, Stan Freberg and Bob Newhart as other ‘60s personalities who influenced British comedy.

They received the Norman Corwin Award for Excellence in Broadcasting, and most of their classic albums, videos, radio shows and books are available at www.firesigntheatre.com and their album Don’t Crush that Dwarf, Hand Me the Pliers was inducted as an historical recording into the Library of Congress in 2006.

In recent years, Phil has appeared as Reverend Patterson on Arrested Development, as Pope Benedict on Jimmy Kimmel Live and as Snorri Magnusen on The Loop. He also travelled to Dublin, Ireland for many years to act with his wife in Roger Gregg’s Crazy Dog Audio Theatre’s darkly comic radio series as well as performing in staged audio plays in Owensboro, Kentucky for the International Mystery Writers’ Festival, where they were made Kentucky Colonels. They then appeared in Florida for producer Zev Buffman in Agatha Christie’s BBC Murders where Melinda portrayed Agatha and Phil, Hercule Poirot, among other roles.

He has toured the U.S. and Canada in a one-man reading of Don Quixote with the LA Guitar Quartet, last presented at the Laguna Beach Music Festival and is currently heard as the wacky announcer on the award-winning CD, The Audio Adventure Book of Big Dan Frater, created by Brian Howe and was seen onstage performing multiple roles in the world premiere of For Piano and Harpo written by and starring Dan Castellaneta at the Garry Marshall Theater in Toluca Lake.

With fellow comic legend Jaime Alcroft of Mack & Jamie fame, he can be seen breaking the news in Boomers on a Bench, a web series on Facebook; and as he approaches his 65th year in Show Business, you can read his autobiography, Where’s My Fortune Cookie? co-authored by Brad Schreiber, which was then launched as a podcast and released as an audiobook by SueMedia.com   https://theproctorpodcast.podbean.com/       

In recent years, he’s appeared with his partner Dave Ossman in a command performance of The Firesign Theatre or What’s Left of It at the Coolidge Amphitheater in Washington, DC for the Library of Congress, which acquired their archives for $500,000 and with his wife, Melinda, is a regular performer at Old Time Radio conventions and last year in an original audio piece by Roger Gregg at the WorldCon Science-Fiction convention in Dublin, Ireland.

He is presently developing a new podcast series with long-time friend and producer, Ted Bonnitt, called Phil & Ted’s Sexy Boomer Show, aimed at that special and unrepresented demographic and will be starring as socialist firebrand, Eugene V. Debs in a national radio project dramatizing his life.

    You can keep up with Phil on his monthly blog Planet Proctor at  http://planetproctor.com

---

   Phil’s musical and linguistic talents have taken him from Broadway where he sang in The Sound of Music and A Time for Singing, across the U.S. and Canada, to Europe, and even the former Soviet Union with the renowned Yale Russian Chorus.

He’s won a Theatre World award, was cited as Best Actor by the LA Free Press, received three Grammy nominations with The Firesign Theatre and shared an L.A. Weekly award for the Antaeus Company’s production of Arthur Miller’s The Man Who Had All The Luck.

Besides being the voice on countless commercials, interactive games, and the top-rated reality show, Big Brother, he plays Howard on the Rugrats, (with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and three Daytime Emmys); seahorse Bob in Finding Nemo, Charlie in Monsters, Inc., the drunken French Monkey in Eddie Murphy’s Dr. Dolittle series, and a Chef in Spirited Away.

e was guest of honor at the 33rd Annual Minicon Science Fiction convention, emceed the InVision Awards in San Francisco and hosted in French and English, the MILIA Interactive Awards on the stage of the Pink Palace in Cannes before 10,000 participants.

His film, TV and stage appearances are too numerous to list but he most recently acted with his wife, Melinda Peterson, in The Independent, starring Jerry Stiller; and they perform regularly with the award-winning Antaeus Classical Company in North Hollywood where he also serves on the Board and just directed Norman Corwin’s radio classic. “The Plot to Overthrow Christmas.” for their annual benefit.

With The Firesign Theatre 4-man group he's appeared for over 35 years on records, CDs, DVDs and stage, screen and TV, including the short films, God’s Clowns. Everything You Know is Wrong, and J-Men Forever. They’ve performed in the first Comic Relief, at the TED conference in Monterey, hosted the 10th annual Pollstar Awards and last toured the West coast with a play based on their first studio album in 17 years, nominated for their second GRAMMY, Give Me Immortality or Give Me Death on Rhino Records.

Their next CD, Boom Dot Bust, was released by WB as the world's first Spoken Arts DVD with visuals; and The Bride of Firesign garnered their third GRAMMY nomination. Many re-releases of all their classic albums and videos are now available @ Laugh.com

In 2001-02 they produced Fools in Space, a monthly 2-hour live show on XM Satellite Radio which won the NY International Radio Festival’s Golden Award for Best Continuing Comedy Series; and were also seen in their one-hour PBS Special, Weirdly Cool, hosted by fans Robin Williams, George Carlin, John Goodman and Chevy Chase. They appeared as well on NPR’s All Things Considered resulting in their last CD, All Things Firesign from Artemis Records.

On April 1st, the fools were honored guests at a special star-studded presentation of their audio plays at UCLA’s Royce Hall and recently performed at the Museum of Natural History. They will do a brief west coast tour of Seattle. Portland, San Rafael and the Cerritos Performing Art Center in Jan/Feb, 2005.