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- Actor
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- Writer
Voice actor and former stand-up comic Roger Craig Smith is a man of a thousand voices. In just one animation production alone, Roger voiced more than 170 characters for the Emmy award-winning Cartoon Network series Regular Show. He's the titular character "Mouse", as well as "Moose" for Amazon Prime's Emmy-nominated children's series If You Give a Mouse a Cookie. For Netflix, Roger voices "Brock", "Mayor Fowler", "Cousin Ashley" and many more on Dreamworks' hit series from Tony Hale, Archibald's Next Big Thing. Also on Netflix, Roger voices "Pinkeye", "Bobby", and "Billy" in Dreamworks Animation's Harvey Girls Forever. On Cartoon Network, he voices "Sonic the Hedgehog" in Sonic Boom, "Hawkodile" and "Richard" for WB/LEGO's Unikitty!, "Diamondhead", "Forever Knight" and "Steam Smythe" on Ben-10, "Percy" and "Belson" in Clarence, "Bob" and "Schedulebot" in Powerpuff Girls. On Disney XD's NAACP Image Award-nominated Avengers: Black Panther's Quest, Roger has been voicing legendary superhero "Captain America" since 2012. He voices "Batman" in in the DC/WB film Superman: Red Son, as well as in the trilogy Batman Unlimited. His impact in the genre of anime includes voicing "Batman" in WB's feature film Batman Ninja, the maniacal "Deidara" in Naruto and "Shinji Hirako" in Bleach. Roger voiced "Sonic the Hedgehog" in Disney's blockbuster features Wreck-It Ralph and Wreck-It Ralph 2: Ralph Breaks the Internet and was called on by Disney in 2013 to voice lead villain "Ripslinger" in Disney's hit feature Planes.
Roger's legacy as an actor in video games is extensive. Voice of gaming icon "Ezio Auditore da Firenze" from Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed, with more than 28 million copies sold worldwide. He's the voice of the charming Legend "Mirage" in Respawn's record-setting Apex Legends, with over 70 million players in 2019 alone. WB chose Roger to voice the legendary "Batman" in WB's Batman: Arkham Origins and Arkham Origins: Blackgate. Roger has been voicing "Sonic the Hedgehog" for SEGA since 2010 and earned early gaming fandom when he voiced "Chris Redfield" in the Resident Evil series of games.
Roger is the announcer/narrator for NBC's smash hit World of Dance, averaging millions of viewers each episode. He's narrated more than 1,000 episodes of other shows, including TLC's longest-running prime-time series Say Yes to the Dress and DIY Network's Crashers series. He's voiced multiple promo campaigns for major networks and is the imaging/promo voice for the world-famous KROQ 106.7FM in Los Angeles. Multiple national retail campaigns continue to utilize Roger to enhance their message to consumers across all mediums.
An average day begins with sessions from his home studio at 7am for national retail clients, heading into LA from 9am-6pm for animation/game sessions, then back to his home studio for more promo/narration sessions in the evening.
Raised in SoCal and voted "Class Clown" in 8th grade, he focused his creativity toward training in musical theater. He spoke at both his 8th and 12th grade graduations, was elected freshman class president in high school, and hosted a live local TV talk show while earning his B.A. in Screenwriting from Chapman University...all while pursuing a career in stand-up comedy. After working as a comic for 5 years, he left stand-up to pursue voice acting full-time in 2005.
Knowing he's got fans of all ages on social media, Roger keeps his posts apolitical and family-friendly. An avid supporter of CHOC (Chidlren's Hospital Orange County), he frequently visits the hospital to meet with patients. He's currently learning ASL (American Sign Language) and enjoys getting outdoors as often as possible to pursue his passion for nature, hiking/mountain biking, and nightscape/astrophotography, which he shares regularly with his followers on Instagram and Twitter. (@rogercraigsmith).- Actor
- Writer
- Producer
Debonair, dark-haired, exceedingly handsome Roger LaVerne Smith was born in South Gate, California to Dallas and Leone Smith on December 18, 1932. At age 6, his parents enrolled him at a professional school for singing, elocution and dancing lessons. By age 12, the family moved to Nogales, Arizona, a small town on the Mexican border where he appeared in high school theater productions, was made president of the school's acting club and became a star linebacker for his high school football team.
While studying at the University of Arizona in Tucson on a football scholarship, Roger entered and won several amateur talent prizes as a singer and guitarist which led to a TV appearance with Ted Mack and his Ted Mack & the Original Amateur Hour (1948) program. Stationed in Hawaii at a Naval Reserve, Roger had a chance meeting with film legend James Cagney. Cagney, impressed with the boy's clean-cut good looks and appeal, encouraged Roger to give Hollywood a try. Roger did so and it didn't take long for Columbia Pictures to snap him up 1957.
While there, young Roger gained experience on such TV anthologies as "Damon Runyon Theatre," "Celebrity Playhouse," "Ford Television Theatre" and "George Sanders Mystery Theatre" and made such films as No Time to Be Young (1957), Operation Mad Ball (1957) and Crash Landing (1958). He also played the older "Patrick Dennis" role in the madcap Rosalind Russell farce Auntie Mame (1958). Roger reconnected with Cagney around this time who not only hired him to play his son, "Lon Jr.", in the Lon Chaney biopic Man of a Thousand Faces (1957), but made him his co-star in the musical comedy-drama Never Steal Anything Small (1959).
In a successful move to the Warner Bros. studio, Roger won the role of wisecracking private detective "Jeff Spencer" in the hip TV series 77 Sunset Strip (1958). He also wrote several of the show's episodes and played the detective character in rollover episodes of "Surf Side Six" and "Hawaiian Eye." In 1962, the actor was hospitalized after falling down at home and losing consciousness. He was diagnosed two days later with a blood clot on the brain. Although he had recovered post-surgery), it forced him to leave the series temporarily and slowed down his career considerably to the point he almost quit.
Wed to budding Australian-born actress Victoria Shaw in 1956, they had three children. A Warner Bros. contractee, she appeared in an episode of his popular series. The marriage crumbled, however, and they divorced in 1965. He next met singer-actress Ann-Margret and they married in 1967. This marriage lasted 50 years, until his death.
Roger's health continued to to be a mysterious issue following his title role in the Warner Bros. short-lived TV series Mister Roberts (1965) and it forced an early retirement when he was diagnosed with myasthenia gravis, a degenerative muscle/nerve disorder. He would last star as the title detective in the low-budget A.C. Lyles production of Rogue's Gallery (1968). In the meantime, he appeared on talk shows with his wife and delved into producing and writing -- with The First Time (1969) and C.C. & Company (1970).
Instead, Roger remained in the background and focused instead on managing, producing and nurturing his wife's musical career. In the 1970s, he proved instrumental in her successful Vegas comeback in Vegas (he produced her stage shows). He also helped to break her "sex kitten" image with critical acclaimed films and produced several of her 1970's TV musical specials.
Roger died of complications from his long-term illness on June 4, 2017, at age 84, and was interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park.- Actor
- Writer
- Producer
Roger Guenveur Smith is an internationally acclaimed actor, writer, and director who has created a prolific body of work on stage and screen.
He adapted his Obie Award-winning solo performance of A Huey P. Newton Story into a Peabody Award-winning telefilm, directed by his longtime colleague Spike Lee, with whom he continues to collaborate in a relationship which is unparalleled in the American cinema.
For Lee's Oscar-nominated Do The Right Thing, Smith improvised the stuttering hero, Smiley, after his debut as fraternity pledge Yoda in Lee's first studio film, school daze. The eclectic range of characters expanded with a Russian roulette-playing gangster in Malcolm X, a guitar-playing cop in Get On The Bus , the street philosopher Big Time Willie in He Got Game, a hardnose detective in Summer Of Sam, and an opportunistic insurance salesman in Chi-Raq.
Also among Smith's recent credits are The Birth Of A Nation, and Bitch, which have achieved distinction in three consecutive Sundance Festivals, and the acclaimed indies Mooz-Lum, and Better Mus' Come, in which he plays the Prime Minister of Jamaica.
Smith's astonishing range is further demonstrated in the cult classics Deep Cover and King Of New York, Eve's Bayou, Hamlet, All About The Benjamins, and American Gangster, for which he was nominated for the Screen Actors' Guild Award. On HBO, Smith has starred in Steven Soderbergh's K Street, Oz, and Unchained Memories: Readings From The Slave Narrative.
Before entering the Yale School of Drama ( into a class which included Angela Bassett, Charles S. Dutton, and John Turturro) Smith studied history, earning an undergraduate degree in American Studies at Occidental College.
He has continued to combine his interests through an ever-evolving stage repertoire which includes Frederick Douglass Now, Christopher Columbus 1992, The Watts Towers Project, In Honor Of Jean-Michel Basquiat, Two Fires, Patriot Act, Juan and John, The End Of Black History Month, Who Killed Bob Marley?, Iceland, and, with Mark Broyard, Inside The Creole Mafia, a "not too dark comedy."
Smith's work is frequently developed through intense archival immersion and improvisation, a process which informs his performing history workshop, which he currently directs at Cal Arts.
Katori Hall's The Mountaintop, Steven Berkoff's Agamemnon, and the Bessie and Ovation Award-winning Radio Mambo, are also among his directorial credits.
Smith frequently collaborates with composer/videographer Marc Anthony Thompson (Chocolate Genius Inc.) and presents his work at the Bootleg Theater in Los Angeles.
Smith was born in Berkeley, and raised in Los Angeles, where he resides with his wife, the writer LeTania Kirkland, and their three children. He has an adult daughter from a former marriage.- Actor
- Producer
Roger Barton Smith is known for The Lord Protector (1996), Black Velvet (2002) and To Catch a Crow (2000).- Roger Smith died on 15 April 2018 in Silvis, Illinois, USA.
- Additional Crew
Rodger B. Smith was born in Columbus, Ohio on July 12, 1925. He earned a bachelor degree in business administration at the University of Michigan in 1947, and his MBA at the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business in 1953. He served in the United States Navy from 1944 to 1946.
Smith began his career at GM (General Motors) in 1949 as an accounting clerk, and had become the company's treasurer by 1970, and vice president the following year. In 1974, Smith was elected executive vice president in charge of the financial, public relations, and government relations staffs. He ascended to chairman of GM in 1981.
When Smith took over GM, it was reeling from its first annual loss since the early 1920s. Its reputation had been tarnished by civil and personal injury lawsuits, persistent quality problems with its manufactured vehicles, bad labor relations, public protests over the installation of Chevrolet engines in Oldsmobiles, and by a poorly designed diesel engine. GM was also losing its market share to foreign automakers for the first time.
Deciding that GM needed to completely change its structure and culture in order to remain competitive into the future, Smith instituted several initiatives that included forming strategic joint ventures with Japanese and South Korean automakers, launching the Saturn division, investing heavily in technological automation and robotics, and attempting to rid the company of its risk-averse bureaucracy. However, Smith's far-reaching goals proved too ambitious and overwhelming to be implemented effectively in the face of the company's resilient corporate culture and bureaucracy. Despite Smith's vision for a new and better GM corporation, he was unable to successfully integrate GM's major acquisitions, several of which also failed to tackle the root causes of GM's fundamental problems.
Smith began the reorganization of GM that would define his chairmanship with the 1981 creation of the worldwide Truck and Bus Group, consolidating the design, manufacture, sales and service of all trucks, buses and vans under one umbrella. The year 1982 saw the creation of the Truck and Bus Manufacturing Division, which combined all truck manufacturing and assembly operations from their former divisions, but still a separate bureaucracy from that of the Truck and Bus Group.
In 1982, Smith negotiated contract concessions with the United Auto Workers and cut planned raises for white-collar workers. After unveiling a more generous bonus program for top executives that provoked an angry response from the union, Smith was forced to back-pedal. Relations with the UAW, management, and stockholders remained strained. Profits improved in 1983 and Smith began unveiling his vision for reorganization, diversification, and "re-industrialization." As as result, many of the auto-making factories in the USA began to close down starting with the Los Angeles South Gate assembly plant that same year.
Smith took on the massive GM bureaucracy with disastrous results. A sea change in how GM would market and build cars in the future, the 1984 reorganization was intended to streamline the process and create greater efficiencies; the reverse actually occurred. Combining the nameplate divisions, Fisher Body, and GM Assembly into two groups, C-P-C (Chevrolet, Pontiac, Canada) to build small cars and B-O-C (Buick, Oldsmobile, Cadillac) to build large cars, the effort was subsequently criticized for creating chaos within the company. Longstanding informal relationships that greased the wheels of GM were severed, seemingly overnight, leading to confusion and slipping new product programs. The reorganization virtually stopped GM in its tracks for 18 months, and never really worked as intended, with the CPC division building Cadillacs and BOC building Pontiacs. The reorganization added costs and created more layers of bureaucracy when the new groups added management, marketing and engineering staff, duplicating existing staff at both the corporate and division levels. Almost ten years elapsed before the 1984 reorganization was unwound and all car groups were combined into one division.
Smith's major new car program prior to the 1984 reorganization, GM10 (also known as W-body), has been called "The biggest catastrophe in American industrial history." Beginning in 1982, and costing $7 billion, the plan was to replace all mid-size cars produced by Chevrolet, Pontiac, Oldsmobile, and Buick. The plan was huge in scope, calling for seven plants that would each assemble 250,000 of the cars, or 21% of the total U.S. car market. It was badly executed from the start, but the 1984 reorganization wrought havoc on the program and it never recovered. By 1989, the year before the last of the GM10s were launched, GM was losing $2,000 on every one of the cars it produced.
A defining theme of Smith's tenure was his vision to modernize GM using advanced technology. Some have suggested he was ahead of his time in attempting to create a 21st-century organization in a company not ready for the technology. "Lights out" factories were envisioned, where the only employees were those supervising the robots and computers. This was obviously viewed negatively by the unions, and further strained relations. Over the decade of the 1980s, GM spent upwards of $90 billion attempting to remake itself, including a 1981 joint venture with the Japanese robot manufacturer, Fujitsu-Fanuc. With the resulting venture, GMF Robotics, GM became the largest manufacturer of robots in the world. Unfortunately, the experience failed to meet with Smith's vision, with the new robots famously painting each other instead of the cars, or robots welding doors shut. Ultimately, some robotic systems and automation installed in several plants were removed shortly after their installation. The astonishing sums expended were widely viewed as money wasted.
Responding to a 1986 report on 3-year capital expenditures projected at almost $35 billion, VP of finance F. Alan Smith (no relation) opined that the sum could be spent on purchasing both Toyota and Nissan resulting in a bump in market share overnight and openly questioned whether the proposed capital expenditures would pay the same dividends; they did not. By the time Smith retired, GM had evolved from the lowest cost producer in Detroit to its highest cost producer, due in part to the drive to acquire advanced technology that never paid dividends in efficiency.
In 1984, Smith oversaw General Motors' acquisition of Electronic Data Systems from its founder Ross Perot for $2.55 billion, serving two purposes. First was the opportunity to modernize and automate GM to fulfill Smith's goals; second, it was an effort to broaden out of its manufacturing base and into technology and services. As a result of the EDS acquisition, Perot became GM's largest single shareholder, joined its board of directors, and immediately became a source of friction to Smith and a vocal and public critic of Smith and GM's management. In 1986 Smith and the board orchestrated a $743 million buyout of Perot's GM stock at a substantial premium over the market value of the shares. Perot accepted the buyout, but publicly denounced the expenditure as outrageous at a time GM was closing plants and laying off workers. He announced that he would put the money in escrow to give the automaker a chance to reconsider, but never actually sequestered the funds.
The structure of the deal was unusual in that EDS would be owned by GM, but Smith promised it would allow Perot autonomy to run the company. In addition, the stock of EDS became a special 'Class E' GM stock, which was separate from normal GM stock, an arrangement which almost got GM kicked off the NYSE. Perot eventually agreed to the deal, because, as Lee puts it, he was sold on the idea of saving millions of American jobs by helping GM fight off Japanese competition.
The relationship between Smith, Perot, and the EDS executives ruptured openly in September 1985, during a meeting in Dallas that brought the EDS executive compensation issue to a head. Smith was reluctant to accept the EDS plan, substituting a plan of his own. What ensued was one of the most vitriolic corporate battles of the 1980s, with Perot and Smith publicly exchanging barbs using the media, which delightedly splashed the story over every business publication in the U.S. Perot notoriously lashed out at Smith in a 1988 exclusive to Fortune Magazine, saying: "My question is: Why haven't we unleashed their potential? The answer is: the General Motors system. It's like a blanket of fog that keeps these people from doing what they know needs to be done. I come from an environment where, if you see a snake, you kill it. At GM, if you see a snake, the first thing you do is go hire a consultant on snakes. Then you get a committee on snakes, and then you discuss it for a couple of years. The most likely course of action is... nothing. You figure, the snake hasn't bitten anybody yet, so you just let him crawl around on the factory floor. We need to build an environment where the first guy who sees the snake kills it."
His tenure at GM ended one year after the release of the popular underground documentary film Roger & Me (1989), where many displaced GM workers called for Smith's retirement. Smith voluntarily resigned as chairman of GM in 1990 and afterwords retired from business altogether. He later toured the new Saturn facility in Tennessee, which he brought to fruition, in 1991.
Smith's tenure is commonly viewed as a failure, as GM's share in the US stock market fell from 46% to 35%, and it took on considerable debt causing it to lapse close to bankruptcy in the early 1990s. As a result, CNBC has called Smith one of the "Worst American CEOs of All Time", stating: "Smith had the right idea, but lacked the intuition to understand how his rip-up-the-carpet redo would affect the delicate web of informal communication that GM relied upon."
Roger B. Smith died in his sleep on November 29, 2007 after a short illness at age 82. A specific cause of death has never been released.- Roger Smith was born in 1960 in Johannesburg, South Africa. He is a writer, known for Inside Story (2011), Mixed Blood and Wake Up Dead.
- Additional Crew
- Writer
- Script and Continuity Department
Roger Smith is known for Sorry We Missed You (2019), The Angels' Share (2012) and The Wind that Shakes the Barley (2006).- Roger Preston Smith is known for Dickinson (2019).
- Roger Smith is known for Full Metal Jacket (1987).
- Roger D. Smith is known for Santa Claus Versus the Zombies (2010) and Bunker of Blood (2011).
- Roger Preston Smith is known for Peter Pan (2000).
- Sound Department
Roger Smith is known for Sunshine Cleaning (2008), The Henry Ford Innovation Nation with Mo Rocca (2014) and Little Red Devil (2008).- Roger Smith is known for Rock and Roll's Greatest Failure: Otway the Movie (2013).
- Roger Smith is known for Family (2003).
- Additional Crew
Roger Smith is known for Grave Images (1991).- Producer
- Director
- Writer
Roger Smith is known for Sara & Suzi (2008), The Crimson Rose (2007) and Mother Teresa's Hiatus (2010).- Roger Smith is known for Madison County (2011).
- Art Department
- Additional Crew
Roger Smith is known for Perfect Dark (2000) and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1984).- Roger Smith is known for The Being (1981).
- Roger Smith is known for Countdown Vampires (1999).
- Roger Smith is known for The Ritual (2000).
- Roger Biggs Smith is known for Sins of a Call Girl (2014).
- Roger Smith is known for Who Killed Jane Doe? (2016).
- Actor
- Composer
Roger Smith is known for Bad Reception (2009) and Province (2007).- Roger Mortimer-Smith is known for Television Theater (1953).
- Roger Smith is known for Leave It on the Court (2010).
- Roger Smith is known for French Film (2008).
- Roger Hartley-Smith is known for Shark in the Park (1989) and The Dark Knight (2000).
- Art Director
Roger Smith is known for Detroit (2006).- Roger Smith is known for Crazy Hands (2009).
- Roger Smith is known for Kidnapped (2022).
- Roger Smith is known for The Good Fight (2006).
- Production Manager
Roger Smith is known for Boys Life 2 (1997) and Must Be the Music (1996).- Special Effects
- Roger Smith is known for Valley Inn (2014).