Hey, Campers!
Did you know that well over a hundred of your favorite celebrities have gone to summer camp? Today I’m talking about Hank Azaria. Hank, when he was your age, was one of those kids where you could tell he was born to be an actor. In his youth he loved memorizing and reciting film scripts, TV shows, and bits from stand-up comedy.
When he was your age he spent some time away at Camp Towanda, located in the Northeast Pocono Mountains in Pennsylvania. The camp is intended for shaping fun, friendship, and good memories. At this point, despite Hank’s interest in movie lines and laugh-out-loud stand-up material, he still hadn’t really thought much about acting.
It wasn’t until he played a part in a school play at the Kew-Forest School in Forest Hills. He was 16 when he began to realize that he was obsessed with acting even when he allowed it to interfere with his studies at school. His parents were huge fans of all kinds of show business which only encouraged him even further.
He went on to study drama in college at Tufts University. Hank knew that he’d regret not be a professional actor if he never tried which was continuous incentive for him to continue studying and pursuing acting. Hank went straight for television despite his ideas of being a movie star because he saw more options there.
He got his start (in 1989) as a voice actor on The Simpsons. He provides the voices for such characters as Moe Szyslak, Apu, Chief Wiggum, Comic Book Guy, and Carl Carlson. He’s still doing their voices today. Hank kept to voice acting for a while but began branching out to live-action movies in the later 90’s. Hank was in Godzilla, Mystery Men, Along Came Polly, and Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian. He was also in The Smurfs.
Hank was obsessed with acting ever since his summer camp days. Are you obsessed with anything?
- John