Jim Ward, the wildly versatile, Emmy-winning voice actor and impressionist known for his work on The Fairly OddParents, Ratchet & Clank and scores of other animated projects, has died. He was 66.
Ward died Wednesday at a memory care facility in Los Angeles after an eight-year battle with Alzheimer’s disease, his wife, actress Janice Ryan Ward, told The Hollywood Reporter.
Ward, who got his start as a tour guide at Universal Studios and as an impressionist in a two-man comedy act, also provided the voices for the Velociraptor XLR8 and the alien Diamondhead on the 2005-08 Cartoon Network series Ben 10 and for video games and movies in the franchise; played C-3PO in the Star Wars universe of direct-to video films and video games; and voiced Commissioner Gordon in Batman videos.
With more than 320 acting credits on IMDb, the San Fernando Valley native could be heard on such Disney films as Mulan (1998), Cars (2006), Toy Story 3 (2010), Monsters University (2013) and Inside Out (2015) and in two Despicable Me films (from 2013 and ’07) and The Grinch (2018) from Universal.
Ward got laughs as the voices of Texas businessman Doug Dimmadome (owner of the Dimmsdale Dimmadome), Channel 7 reporter Chet Ubetcha, actor Sylvester Calzone and many other folks on Nickelodeon’s The Fairly OddParents over 10 seasons from 2001-17.
And from 2002-21, he starred as the egotistical superhero Captain Qwark in action-adventure Ratchet & Clank projects that included a 2016 feature and several video games.
One of two kids, James Kevin Ward was born in San Francisco on May 19, 1959. Raised in Sherman Oaks, he attended U.S. Grant High School, where he “became well-known on campus for his celebrity impersonations and witty improvisations, occasionally getting himself into trouble with the humorless school vice principal when he went off-script during the morning P.A. announcements,” his wife said. David Frye and Mort Sahl were among his inspirations.
Ward then graduated from UCLA, where his father, Don Ward, taught German and served as director of the Center for the Study of Comparative Folklore and Mythology. (Jim’s mother, Marilou, was a singer in a female trio in the 1940s.)
His first job out of college was as a tour guide on buses at Universal Studios, where he entertained guests with his impressions and jokes.
Someone heard him impersonating William Daniels’ K.I.T.T., the computer that controlled David Hasselhoff’s 1982 Pontiac Trans Am on NBC’s Knight Rider, and that led him to duplicating that voice for two episodes of NBC’s Diff’rent Strokes in 1994.
Meanwhile, he and Tony Forkush — a fellow former Universal tour guide — had launched a comedy act called Forkush & Ward.
“Anyone who knew Jim at all knew that no one did a better Jack Nicholson impression,” Forkush recalled. “When he pulled his hair up, crinkled his face and that voice came out of him, the audience went absolutely berserk.” The duo worked the live comedy circuit, performing with the Nothing Sacred troupe in L.A.
Ward’s voice-acting career took off in the early 1990s, and he would work on Metal Gear and Call of Duty video games and entries in the Avatar, Transformers, Spider-Man and Avengers franchises. He also showed up on live-action episodes of such shows as Ellen, Becker, ER, Alias and According to Jim.
Ward received his Daytime Emmy in 2009 for his turn as Stoker (taking over the role from Peter Strauss) on the remake of the Fox kids series Biker Mice From Mars.
Star Trek fans may recall his appearances in commercials for 7/11 stores when he played a hyper fan excited to get a commemorative cup tied in with one of the Trek films. On those, he imitated all of the show’s key characters while showing off his cup.
For more than 20 years through 2017, when Alzheimer’s began taking its toll, Ward co-hosted and did impersonations on the syndicated radio program The Stephanie Miller Show. (Miller devoted her show on Thursday to him.)
He also spoke fluent German and played the guitar and the harmonica.
In addition to his wife — they met on a cruise to Mexico in 2000 and married in 2009 — and his mother, survivors include his sister, Natalie; his brother-in-law, Evan; and two nephews.
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