Ben Whitehead | |
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Born | Benjamin Whitehead 15 May 1977 London, England |
Occupation | Actor |
Years active | 2003–present [1] |
Benjamin Whitehead (born 15 May 1977) is an English actor. He is best known as the current voice of Wallace in the Wallace and Gromit franchise following Peter Sallis' retirement and subsequent death. [2]
Whitehead began working on films with Aardman Animations in 2003. [3] In 2009, he voiced Wallace in Wallace & Gromit's Grand Adventures , [4] a four-part episodic adventure game by Telltale Games. [5] After Peter Sallis's last work as Wallace in 2010, [6] [7] Whitehead became the official voice of the character beginning with Wallace & Gromit's Musical Marvels , Prom 20 of the 2012 season of the BBC Proms. [8] Outside of acting, Whitehead is also Aardman's read-in artist.
Ben has performed in Great Scott!, an Antarctic epic touring comedy from Gonzo Moose. He performed a one-man show at the London Horror Festival and voiced the title role in Golem (Young Vic and tour), produced by multi award-winning theatre company 1927, directed by Suzanne Andrade and Paul Barritt. [9]
Year | Title | Role | Notes |
---|---|---|---|
2005 | Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit | Mr. Leaching (voice) | |
2008 | A Matter of Loaf and Death | Wallace, Baker Bob (voices) | Short, role of Wallace with stand-in for Peter Sallis Also read-in artist |
2012 | The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists! | The Pirate Who Likes Sunsets and Kittens (voice) | United Kingdom version |
So You Want to Be a Pirate! | Announcer (voice) | Short film | |
2013 | Secrets of the Dark House | Husband | |
2018 | Early Man | Additional voices | |
2023 | Eigengrau Half-Life [10] | Michael Hobbs | Short film |
2024 | Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl | Wallace (voice) | Post-production |
Year | Title | Role | Notes |
---|---|---|---|
2012 | BBC Proms | Wallace (voice) | 1 episode |
2019 | Berry Bees | Additional voices | Unknown episode |
Year | Title | Role |
---|---|---|
2005 | Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit | Mr. Leaching, Hutch |
2009 | Wallace & Gromit's Grand Adventures | Wallace |
2015 | Anno 2205 | John Rafferty |
2016 | Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun | Male Civilian, Officer |
2017 | The Pillars of the Earth | Remigius, Civilians |
2019 | Layers of Fear 2 | Journalist |
Trine 4: The Nightmare Prince | Sir Florianus | |
A Year of Rain | Additional voices | |
2020 | Total War Saga: Troy | |
Wallace & Gromit: The Big Fix Up | Wallace | |
2021 | Sherlock Holmes: Chapter One | Additional voices |
2023 | Wallace & Gromit in The Grand Getaway | Wallace |
Year | Title | Role | Notes |
---|---|---|---|
2020 | Down | Therapist, Boss | 1 episode |
Wallace and Gromit is a British stop-motion animated comedy franchise created by Nick Park and produced by Aardman Animations. It consists of four short films, two feature-length films and has spawned numerous spin-offs and TV adaptations. The series centres on Wallace, a good-natured, eccentric, cheese-loving inventor, and Gromit, his loyal and intelligent anthropomorphic beagle. The first short film, A Grand Day Out, was finished and released in 1989. Wallace was voiced by actor Peter Sallis until 2010 when he was succeeded by Ben Whitehead. While Wallace speaks very often, Gromit is largely silent and has no dialogue, communicating through facial expressions and body language.
Aardman Animations Limited is a British animation studio based in Bristol. It is known for films and television series made using stop-motion and clay animation techniques, particularly those featuring its plasticine characters from Wallace and Gromit, Shaun the Sheep, and Morph. After some experimental computer-animated short films during the late 1990s, beginning with Owzat (1997), Aardman entered the computer animation market with Flushed Away (2006). As of February 2020, it had earned $1.1 billion worldwide, with an average $135.6 million per film.
Nicholas Wulstan Park is an English filmmaker and animator who created Wallace and Gromit, Creature Comforts, Chicken Run, Shaun the Sheep, and Early Man. Park has been nominated for an Academy Award a total of six times and won four with Creature Comforts (1989), The Wrong Trousers (1993), A Close Shave (1995) and Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005).
Rex the Runt is a live-action stop-motion adult animated claymation pixilation comedy series, primarily consisting of a television show and two short films produced by Aardman Animations and Egmont Imagination for BBC Bristol, with EVA Entertainment co-producing the first series. Its main characters are four plasticine dogs: Rex, Wendy, Bad Bob and Vince.
Wallace and Gromit: A Close Shave is a 1995 British stop-motion animated short film co-written and directed by Nick Park and produced by Aardman Animations with Wallace and Gromit Ltd., BBC Bristol and BBC Children's International. It is the third film featuring Wallace and Gromit, following A Grand Day Out (1989) and The Wrong Trousers (1993). A Close Shave won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film. A Close Shave saw the first appearance of Shaun, who became the main character of the Shaun the Sheep spin-off series.
The Wrong Trousers is a 1993 British stop-motion animated short film co-written and directed by Nick Park, featuring his characters Wallace and Gromit, and was produced by Aardman Animations in association with Wallace and Gromit Ltd., BBC Bristol, Lionheart Television and BBC Children's International. It is the second film featuring the eccentric inventor Wallace and his dog Gromit, following A Grand Day Out (1989). In the film, a villainous penguin, Feathers McGraw, posing as a lodger, recruits Wallace by using his techno-trousers to steal a diamond from the city museum.
A Grand Day Out with Wallace and Gromit, later marketed as Wallace and Gromit:A Grand Day Out, is a 1989 British stop-motion animated short film starring Wallace and Gromit. It was directed, animated and co-written by Nick Park at the National Film and Television School in Beaconsfield and Aardman Animations in Bristol.
Peter John Sallis was an English actor, known for his work on British television. He was the voice of Wallace in the Academy Award-winning Wallace and Gromit films and played Norman "Cleggy" Clegg in Last of the Summer Wine from its 1973 inception until the final episode in 2010, making him the only actor to appear in all 295 episodes. Additionally, he portrayed Norman Clegg's father in the prequel series First of the Summer Wine.
Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit is a 2005 animated comedy film directed by Nick Park and Steve Box. It was produced, made and owned by DreamWorks Animation in collaboration with Aardman Animations. It was the second feature-length film by Aardman, after Chicken Run (2000) and the last DreamWorks Animation film distributed by its parent DreamWorks Pictures, as the studio spun off as an independent studio in 2004 until its acquisition by NBCUniversal in 2016. The film debuted in Sydney, Australia on 4 September 2005, before being released in theaters in the United States on 7 October 2005 and in the United Kingdom a week later on 14 October 2005.
Shaun the Sheep is a stop-motion animated silent comedy children's television series which is developed by Aardman Animations. A spin-off in the Wallace and Gromit franchise, the series focuses on the adventures of Shaun, the eponymous sheep previously starring in A Close Shave, as the leader of his flock on a English farm. The series premiered on 5 March 2007 on CBBC in the UK, also airing on BBC Two. Since 2020, the series is streamed globally on Netflix. In March 2024, it was announced that the seventh series is in development and will premiere in 2025. With 170 episodes over 6 series, Shaun the Sheep is one of the longest-running animated series in British television.
Wallace & Gromit in Project Zoo is a platform video game developed by Frontier Developments and published by BAM! Entertainment for the GameCube, PlayStation 2, Xbox and Microsoft Windows. It is the first console game to feature Aardman Animations' characters Wallace and Gromit and also features the voice of Wallace, Peter Sallis reprising his role.
Wallace and Gromit: A Matter of Loaf and Death is a 2008 British stop-motion animated short film produced by Aardman Animations and created by Nick Park. It is the fourth short to star his characters Wallace and Gromit, the first one since A Close Shave in 1995.
Wallace & Gromit's Grand Adventures is an episodic graphic adventure game based around the characters of Wallace and Gromit created by Nick Park and Aardman Animations. The game was developed and published by Telltale Games. It consists of four episodes, which were released to Microsoft Windows from March 23 to July 30, 2009, and to Xbox 360 from May 27 to November 4, 2009.
Jared Nathaniel Emerson-Johnson is an American video game music composer, sound designer, voice director and voice actor. Emerson-Johnson is the Music Supervisor and lead composer at Bay Area Sound, an audio production company specializing in sound design, music and voiceover for video games. His work has been predominantly featured in games developed by Telltale.
Wallace and Gromit's World of Invention is a British science-themed miniseries, starring Peter Sallis, Ashley Jensen, Jem Stansfield, and John Sparkes, produced by Aardman Animations, which aired on BBC One during 2010, from 3 November to 8 December. The programme focuses on inventions based around various themes, and consists of live-action films interlaced with animated claymation segments hosted by characters Wallace and Gromit, featuring a side-plot connected to that episode's theme. While Sallis reprises his role as the voice of Wallace, live-action film segments were either narrated by Jensen or presented by Stansfield, with Sparkes providing the voice of Wallace and Gromit's unseen archivist Goronwy, a unique character for the programme.
Wallace & Gromit's Musical Marvels is the name of Prom 20 of the 2012 season of The BBC Proms, which features orchestral renditions of Julian Nott's theme from Wallace and Gromit and classical music set to scenes from the Wallace & Gromit films. Wallace is performed by Ben Whitehead, the actor who performed Wallace in the episodic adventure game series, Wallace & Gromit's Grand Adventures. Due to its popularity, it became a full touring show in 2013, premiering at The Plenary in Melbourne, Australia on 9 February 2013.
Sean Vanaman is an American video game designer, writer, and podcaster. He was the co-project leader and lead writer of The Walking Dead, and Puzzle Agent 2. He also wrote the third episode of Tales of Monkey Island, and was the designer of Wallace & Gromit's Grand Adventures, and the writer of the third episode, Muzzled. He was one of the regular hosts of the Idle Thumbs podcast and is one of the co-founders of Campo Santo, the company that produced Firewatch.
Aardman Animations is an animation studio in Bristol, England that produces stop motion and computer-animated features, shorts, TV series and adverts.
Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl is an upcoming 2024 British stop-motion animated comedy film produced by Aardman Animations and directed by Nick Park and Merlin Crossingham, featuring Park's characters Wallace and Gromit. The film will premiere during Christmas 2024 on BBC One and BBC iPlayer in the United Kingdom and on Netflix internationally.