Eric Bauza, the Canadian voice actor who spent the last few years being the voice of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and most of the rest of the Warner Bros. cartoon repertory company, has died at the age of 46. His family announced the news on Instagram on Sunday night, saying that the “Emmy Award-winning voice actor and the modern voice of iconic Looney Tunes characters Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck, along with dozens of other beloved cartoon characters, has passed away suddenly. More details to come.” He died at home. TMZ, quoted by TheWrap, reports the cause as hypertensive cardiovascular disease; the family has not commented on that.
Born in Scarborough, Ontario, on 7 December 1979, Bauza inherited one of the hardest jobs in show business. Mel Blanc voiced Bugs for nearly fifty years, and every actor since has had to sound exactly like a dead genius while also turning up on time and acting. Bauza managed it. By the time Looney Tunes Cartoons arrived in 2020 he was the studio’s Bugs and Daffy, and that series won him the first of his three Children’s and Family Emmys in 2022. Bugs Bunny Builders brought a second in 2023, and Teen Titans Go! a third in 2024.
What the mainstream obituaries are a bit slow to mention is how much of his career was spent in our part of the forest. His way into the Looney Tunes was Marvin the Martian, on The Looney Tunes Show, and he went on voicing the little Roman-helmeted menace in New Looney Tunes, Looney Tunes Cartoons and Space Jam: A New Legacy. Earth’s continued survival in those cartoons is largely down to Marvin’s habit of losing the Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator.
The rest of his genre CV reads like a pick of the last decade’s animation. He was Splinter in Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Drift in Transformers: Robots in Disguise, D.A. Sinclair in Invincible (taking over from Ezra Miller), and the Sentinels and Master Mold in X-Men ’97, which means the same throat gave us both Bugs Bunny and a giant robot that wants to exterminate mutants. He was Luke Skywalker in several Lego Star Wars outings, turned up in Star Wars Resistance and Young Jedi Adventures, and found time for Avatar: The Last Airbender, Gravity Falls, Rick and Morty, Blue Eye Samurai and Two-Face in Batman Ninja.
This year also brought Coyote vs. Acme, the Looney Tunes feature Warner Bros. finished and then shelved, before Ketchup Entertainment bought it and put it in cinemas (in the UK and Ireland from 21 August). Bauza voiced most of its male cast, from Bugs and Daffy to Foghorn Leghorn and Porky Pig, and had been loudly on the film’s side through its cancellation and rescue. Gizmodo reports that his final performances will be in The Dragon Masters and the Looney Tunes film Bye Bye Bunny.
Channing Dungey, chairman of Warner Bros. Television Group, called him “a unique voice talent who brought joy and laughter to millions around the world” and “a treasured part of our animation family.” Adam Sharp of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences said he had carried “the torch of ‘a thousand voices’ for the digital generation.” Among his fellow voice actors, Robbie Daymond called him “one of the most talented, kind, compassionate, lovable… people I’ve ever known.”
It has been a bad few days for genre voices, with Walter Koenig gone too. Bauza’s will keep turning up in reruns, streaming queues and children’s bedrooms for decades, which is more than most of us can say. That’s all, folks, but much too soon.
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