The Filipino-Canadian actor spent his childhood drawing Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck. Decades later, he was performing their voices, carrying forward an animation legacy while building a career that earned three Emmy Awards.
Eric Bauza at WonderCon in Anaheim, California, on March 29, 2026. The Scarborough-raised voice actor performed Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig and numerous other animated characters during a career spanning approximately 25 years.
Photo credit: Gage Skidmore
Growing up in Scarborough, Eric Bauza recorded The Bugs Bunny and Tweety Show on VHS tapes so he could pause the cartoons and copy the characters into a notepad. In a March 2025 interview with Animation Scoop, he remembered practising their construction, including how they appeared in three dimensions. He also imitated their voices, eventually becoming accomplished enough that his teachers invited him to perform impressions during the school's morning announcements.
Years later, those same characters became his professional responsibility. Bauza went from studying Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck on a television screen to performing both characters for Warner Bros., joining a succession of voice actors entrusted with continuing the work of Mel Blanc.
Bauza died at his Los Angeles home on October 25, 2026, at age 46. His family announced his sudden death, and the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner identified hypertensive cardiovascular disease as the cause.
During a career spanning approximately 25 years, the Toronto-born performer accumulated more than 400 voice acting credits and won three Children's & Family Emmy Awards. His work included Looney Tunes Cartoons, The Adventures of Puss in Boots, Muppet Babies, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and numerous feature films, television series and video games.
Growing up with cartoons in Scarborough
Born on December 7, 1979, Bauza was raised in Scarborough by Filipino immigrant parents. His father and grandfather introduced him to classic Looney Tunes shorts, and he became fascinated by both the artwork and the performers who gave the characters their voices.
He attended Cardinal Newman Catholic High School, where his impressions of teachers and cartoon characters entertained classmates. Bauza later recalled that his teachers permitted him to use the school's public-address system when he completed his assignments. He turned the morning announcements into short performances featuring familiar animated personalities.
Although he enjoyed performing, he initially intended to work behind the scenes. He spent time operating cameras, experimenting with audio equipment and making videos for school assemblies. He was particularly interested in drawing and animation, fields in which he could combine his artistic interests with filmmaking.
After considering animation studies at Sheridan College, Bauza enrolled in Centennial College's radio, television and film production program. An internship during his third year brought him to Los Angeles and into the animation industry.
In his 2020 Animation Scoop interview, Bauza credited an uncle living in Los Angeles with helping him see animation as a possible career. The uncle regularly sent newspaper articles about the industry to Toronto at a time when American studios were recruiting Canadian animators. Bauza was interested in drawing for those productions before he considered performing in them.
He remained attached to Scarborough after establishing his career in California. During a 2023 interview with Toronto Guardian, Bauza recalled the multicultural neighbourhoods, journeys through Kennedy Station and winters spent walking through the snow near his school. He also described attending Toronto Raptors games, including one appearance in which he addressed the crowd as Bugs Bunny and was subsequently recognized by fans.
Learning the craft from the drawing board
Bauza joined Spümcø, the animation studio associated with Ren & Stimpy creator John Kricfalusi, as an intern around 1999 and 2000. He initially worked as a production assistant, including on the Flash-animated series Weekend Pussy Hunt.
The studio was also developing The Ripping Friends, an American-Canadian animated production that premiered in 2001. Bauza wanted to contribute a character voice and repeatedly expressed his interest to the production team.
He eventually received several small roles, including Future Cat, a character whose voice was modelled on that of animation writer and historian Amid Amidi. It became one of Bauza's first professional voice performances.
After the series ended, Bauza returned to Canada and worked at Funbag Animation in Ottawa. He subsequently joined Ren & Stimpy: Adult Party Cartoon, performing the voice of Stimpy while also contributing to production and editing.
The role required him to study the character's established vocal characteristics. In a 2009 interview with Fülle Circle Magazine, Bauza explained how he had examined Billy West's original performance alongside the work of Larry Fine from the Three Stooges, whose voice had influenced the character.
He also worked extensively with animatics, assembling storyboard images, dialogue, music and sound effects to establish the timing of animated scenes. The experience provided an education in how individual sounds and movements contribute to comedy.
Bauza continued working as a character layout artist, repeatedly hearing recorded dialogue as he prepared drawings. In a 2020 interview with Animation Scoop, he explained that listening to other performers helped him recognize the finer details of their acting.
His major television breakthrough came with Nickelodeon's El Tigre: The Adventures of Manny Rivera, which premiered in 2007. He voiced Rodolfo Rivera, the superhero White Pantera, in the series created by Jorge R. Gutiérrez and Sandra Equihua.
Bauza later acknowledged that his early performances needed improvement. Although he could produce convincing impressions and unusual voices, acting required a broader understanding of characterization. Working alongside experienced performers, including Tara Strong, Tom Kenny and John DiMaggio, helped him develop those skills.
By 2011, his voice acting career had become sufficiently established that he stopped working as an animation artist.
Carrying on Mel Blanc's legacy
Bauza began performing Marvin the Martian in The Looney Tunes Show in 2011. Over the following decade, he added Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Tweety, Elmer Fudd, Foghorn Leghorn and other characters to his repertoire.
The assignments connected him to one of animation's most influential performers. Mel Blanc had established the voices and personalities of numerous Warner Bros. characters, creating performances that remained familiar to audiences long after his death in 1989.
Bauza studied Blanc's work extensively, although he also understood that each new production placed different demands on its actors. In his 2020 interview with Animation Scoop, he described the responsibility of performing these characters as "insanely intimidating and nerve-racking."
He was aware that audiences could identify small differences between performers, and he remained critical of his own recordings. He also credited fellow voice actors with helping him refine his interpretations.
His prominence increased with Looney Tunes Cartoons, which premiered in 2020 and returned to the exaggerated visual comedy associated with the classic theatrical shorts.
One of his most demanding assignments arrived with The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie, released theatrically in North America in 2025. Bauza voiced both Daffy Duck and Porky Pig, the film's central characters, opposite Candi Milo as Petunia Pig.
Performing both leads meant creating conversations between characters with contrasting personalities and speech patterns. Daffy's explosive impatience and Porky's hesitant delivery required different approaches to rhythm, pitch and emotion.
Bauza and Milo discussed the process in a March 2025 Animation Scoop interview. He described Blanc as the blueprint for the characters and explained that his preparation involved studying their performances over many years.
His work received three Children's & Family Emmy Awards: in 2022 for Looney Tunes Cartoons, in 2023 for Bugs Bunny Builders and in 2025 for Teen Titans Go! Bauza also hosted the Children's & Family Emmy Awards ceremony in March 2025.
A career far beyond Looney Tunes
Although Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck brought Bauza his greatest public recognition, his career encompassed numerous other characters and franchises.
He voiced the title character in DreamWorks' The Adventures of Puss in Boots, taking on a television role associated with Antonio Banderas in the feature films. He also performed Baby Fozzie in Disney Junior's Muppet Babies, Tiger Claw in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Splinter in Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
Additional credits included Ben 10: Omniverse, The Fairly OddParents, DuckTales, Uncle Grandpa, Rick and Morty and Tiny Toons Looniversity, in which he voiced Buster Bunny. He performed Woody Woodpecker in contemporary films and contributed voices to Space Jam: A New Legacy and The Super Mario Bros. Movie.
Bauza's versatility also made him valuable for voice matching, the practice of recreating performances associated with established actors or characters. The work demanded accuracy while adapting to the requirements of new scenes, scripts and production teams.
Reconsidering the cartoons he loved
In 2022, Bauza returned to Canadian television as the host of Stay Tooned, a six-part documentary series produced by Fathom Film Group for CBC Gem.
The series examined the cultural influence of animation, bringing together performers, filmmakers and commentators to discuss representation, stereotypes, consumerism and changing attitudes toward popular entertainment.
For Bauza, the project involved reconsidering cartoons he had loved since childhood. The Canadian Press identified him in 2022 as the first non-white actor to voice Bugs Bunny, a role he began in 2018. His experiences informed the series' discussions of how animated entertainment had portrayed different communities.
In a December 2022 interview with POV Magazine, Bauza discussed the limited representation he had encountered growing up and his interest in more authentic casting. He argued that productions portraying particular communities should involve people familiar with those experiences, including among their writers and performers.
He also questioned the industry's dependence on established intellectual property, observing that original ideas sometimes struggled to find support while familiar animated franchises continued to receive new versions.
Stay Tooned gave Bauza an opportunity to explore animation history from the perspective of someone who had worked on both sides of the recording booth. His affection for the medium remained apparent, even when its history required criticism.
Fighting for Coyote vs. Acme
One of Bauza's final major theatrical projects was Coyote vs. Acme, a live-action and animated film directed by Dave Green and starring Will Forte and John Cena.
Bauza recalled in a 2026 oral history published by The Ringer that his involvement began with a cast table read over Zoom. He had not auditioned for the film, and his characters arrived only later in the script. When he finally began speaking as the Looney Tunes characters, he noticed Forte's reaction. Forte, in the same oral history, praised Bauza's ability to take on voices so closely associated with Mel Blanc.
The film follows Wile E. Coyote as he takes legal action against the Acme Corporation after years of suffering injuries caused by its unreliable products.
Despite completing production, Warner Bros. announced in November 2023 that it would shelve the film. The decision prompted criticism from filmmakers, animation professionals and fans, many of whom called for its release.
Bauza became an outspoken supporter of the campaign. During the 2024 Annie Awards, he appealed for the film's release while performing as Daffy Duck, drawing applause from the audience.
He promoted the #ReleaseCoyoteVsACME campaign on social media and discussed the film's uncertain future in interviews. In an August 2026 oral history published by The Ringer, Bauza recalled calling director Dave Green immediately after learning that Ketchup Entertainment had acquired the film, seeking confirmation that the news was real. He also discussed the possibility of completed films being withheld from audiences.
The film was eventually acquired by Ketchup Entertainment and reached theatres on August 28, 2026. Bauza voiced multiple Looney Tunes characters, including Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Elmer Fudd and Foghorn Leghorn.
Remembering Eric Bauza
Following Bauza's death, colleagues from across the animation industry shared memories of working with him.
Jorge R. Gutiérrez, who had helped give Bauza his breakthrough role in El Tigre, recalled meeting him in 2003 and described the actor as someone who improved every production he joined. Other performers, including John Cena, Jack Quaid and Vincent Martella, also paid tribute to his talent and generosity.
In a joint statement, Warner Bros. Television Group and U.S. Networks chair Channing Dungey and Warner Bros. Pictures Animation president Bill Damaschke described Bauza as a treasured colleague and recognized his work continuing the Looney Tunes tradition.
Bauza frequently spoke about his good fortune in performing characters that had entertained audiences for generations. In a 2026 interview with The Associated Press, he acknowledged that the Looney Tunes had existed long before his birth and would continue beyond his lifetime.
Bauza's own son could distinguish the two performers. In a 2022 interview with POV Magazine, Bauza recalled being summoned across the schoolyard to deliver Bugs Bunny's familiar greeting for his son's friends, who then dismissed him once they had heard it. Shortly before the release of Coyote vs. Acme, Bauza told The Associated Press that these characters predated him and would outlast him. "I just feel like the luckiest guy," he said.(1979–2026): The Scarborough Artist Who Became the Voice of Looney Tunes
The Filipino-Canadian actor spent his childhood drawing Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck. Decades later, he was performing their voices, carrying forward an animation legacy while building a career that earned three Emmy Awards.
Growing up in Scarborough, Eric Bauza recorded The Bugs Bunny and Tweety Show on VHS tapes so he could pause the cartoons and copy the characters into a notepad. In a March 2025 interview with Animation Scoop, he remembered practising their construction, including how they appeared in three dimensions. He also imitated their voices, eventually becoming accomplished enough that his teachers invited him to perform impressions during the school's morning announcements.
Years later, those same characters became his professional responsibility. Bauza went from studying Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck on a television screen to performing both characters for Warner Bros., joining a succession of voice actors entrusted with continuing the work of Mel Blanc.
Bauza died at his Los Angeles home on October 25, 2026, at age 46. His family announced his sudden death, and the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner identified hypertensive cardiovascular disease as the cause.
During a career spanning approximately 25 years, the Toronto-born performer accumulated more than 400 voice acting credits and won three Children's & Family Emmy Awards. His work included Looney Tunes Cartoons, The Adventures of Puss in Boots, Muppet Babies, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and numerous feature films, television series and video games.
Growing up with cartoons in Scarborough
Born on December 7, 1979, Bauza was raised in Scarborough by Filipino immigrant parents. His father and grandfather introduced him to classic Looney Tunes shorts, and he became fascinated by both the artwork and the performers who gave the characters their voices.
He attended Cardinal Newman Catholic High School, where his impressions of teachers and cartoon characters entertained classmates. Bauza later recalled that his teachers permitted him to use the school's public-address system when he completed his assignments. He turned the morning announcements into short performances featuring familiar animated personalities.
Although he enjoyed performing, he initially intended to work behind the scenes. He spent time operating cameras, experimenting with audio equipment and making videos for school assemblies. He was particularly interested in drawing and animation, fields in which he could combine his artistic interests with filmmaking.
After considering animation studies at Sheridan College, Bauza enrolled in Centennial College's radio, television and film production program. An internship during his third year brought him to Los Angeles and into the animation industry.
In his 2020 Animation Scoop interview, Bauza credited an uncle living in Los Angeles with helping him see animation as a possible career. The uncle regularly sent newspaper articles about the industry to Toronto at a time when American studios were recruiting Canadian animators. Bauza was interested in drawing for those productions before he considered performing in them.
He remained attached to Scarborough after establishing his career in California. During a 2023 interview with Toronto Guardian, Bauza recalled the multicultural neighbourhoods, journeys through Kennedy Station and winters spent walking through the snow near his school. He also described attending Toronto Raptors games, including one appearance in which he addressed the crowd as Bugs Bunny and was subsequently recognized by fans.
Learning the craft from the drawing board
Bauza joined Spümcø, the animation studio associated with Ren & Stimpy creator John Kricfalusi, as an intern around 1999 and 2000. He initially worked as a production assistant, including on the Flash-animated series Weekend Pussy Hunt.
The studio was also developing The Ripping Friends, an American-Canadian animated production that premiered in 2001. Bauza wanted to contribute a character voice and repeatedly expressed his interest to the production team.
He eventually received several small roles, including Future Cat, a character whose voice was modelled on that of animation writer and historian Amid Amidi. It became one of Bauza's first professional voice performances.
After the series ended, Bauza returned to Canada and worked at Funbag Animation in Ottawa. He subsequently joined Ren & Stimpy: Adult Party Cartoon, performing the voice of Stimpy while also contributing to production and editing.
The role required him to study the character's established vocal characteristics. In a 2009 interview with Fülle Circle Magazine, Bauza explained how he had examined Billy West's original performance alongside the work of Larry Fine from the Three Stooges, whose voice had influenced the character.
He also worked extensively with animatics, assembling storyboard images, dialogue, music and sound effects to establish the timing of animated scenes. The experience provided an education in how individual sounds and movements contribute to comedy.
Bauza continued working as a character layout artist, repeatedly hearing recorded dialogue as he prepared drawings. In a 2020 interview with Animation Scoop, he explained that listening to other performers helped him recognize the finer details of their acting.
His major television breakthrough came with Nickelodeon's El Tigre: The Adventures of Manny Rivera, which premiered in 2007. He voiced Rodolfo Rivera, the superhero White Pantera, in the series created by Jorge R. Gutiérrez and Sandra Equihua.
Bauza later acknowledged that his early performances needed improvement. Although he could produce convincing impressions and unusual voices, acting required a broader understanding of characterization. Working alongside experienced performers, including Tara Strong, Tom Kenny and John DiMaggio, helped him develop those skills.
By 2011, his voice acting career had become sufficiently established that he stopped working as an animation artist.
Carrying on Mel Blanc's legacy
Bauza began performing Marvin the Martian in The Looney Tunes Show in 2011. Over the following decade, he added Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Tweety, Elmer Fudd, Foghorn Leghorn and other characters to his repertoire.
The assignments connected him to one of animation's most influential performers. Mel Blanc had established the voices and personalities of numerous Warner Bros. characters, creating performances that remained familiar to audiences long after his death in 1989.
Bauza studied Blanc's work extensively, although he also understood that each new production placed different demands on its actors. In his 2020 interview with Animation Scoop, he described the responsibility of performing these characters as "insanely intimidating and nerve-racking."
He was aware that audiences could identify small differences between performers, and he remained critical of his own recordings. He also credited fellow voice actors with helping him refine his interpretations.
His prominence increased with Looney Tunes Cartoons, which premiered in 2020 and returned to the exaggerated visual comedy associated with the classic theatrical shorts.
One of his most demanding assignments arrived with The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie, released theatrically in North America in 2025. Bauza voiced both Daffy Duck and Porky Pig, the film's central characters, opposite Candi Milo as Petunia Pig.
Performing both leads meant creating conversations between characters with contrasting personalities and speech patterns. Daffy's explosive impatience and Porky's hesitant delivery required different approaches to rhythm, pitch and emotion.
Bauza and Milo discussed the process in a March 2025 Animation Scoop interview. He described Blanc as the blueprint for the characters and explained that his preparation involved studying their performances over many years.
His work received three Children's & Family Emmy Awards: in 2022 for Looney Tunes Cartoons, in 2023 for Bugs Bunny Builders and in 2025 for Teen Titans Go! Bauza also hosted the Children's & Family Emmy Awards ceremony in March 2025.
A career far beyond Looney Tunes
Although Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck brought Bauza his greatest public recognition, his career encompassed numerous other characters and franchises.
He voiced the title character in DreamWorks' The Adventures of Puss in Boots, taking on a television role associated with Antonio Banderas in the feature films. He also performed Baby Fozzie in Disney Junior's Muppet Babies, Tiger Claw in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Splinter in Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
Additional credits included Ben 10: Omniverse, The Fairly OddParents, DuckTales, Uncle Grandpa, Rick and Morty and Tiny Toons Looniversity, in which he voiced Buster Bunny. He performed Woody Woodpecker in contemporary films and contributed voices to Space Jam: A New Legacy and The Super Mario Bros. Movie.
Bauza's versatility also made him valuable for voice matching, the practice of recreating performances associated with established actors or characters. The work demanded accuracy while adapting to the requirements of new scenes, scripts and production teams.
Reconsidering the cartoons he loved
In 2022, Bauza returned to Canadian television as the host of Stay Tooned, a six-part documentary series produced by Fathom Film Group for CBC Gem.
The series examined the cultural influence of animation, bringing together performers, filmmakers and commentators to discuss representation, stereotypes, consumerism and changing attitudes toward popular entertainment.
For Bauza, the project involved reconsidering cartoons he had loved since childhood. The Canadian Press identified him in 2022 as the first non-white actor to voice Bugs Bunny, a role he began in 2018. His experiences informed the series' discussions of how animated entertainment had portrayed different communities.
In a December 2022 interview with POV Magazine, Bauza discussed the limited representation he had encountered growing up and his interest in more authentic casting. He argued that productions portraying particular communities should involve people familiar with those experiences, including among their writers and performers.
He also questioned the industry's dependence on established intellectual property, observing that original ideas sometimes struggled to find support while familiar animated franchises continued to receive new versions.
Stay Tooned gave Bauza an opportunity to explore animation history from the perspective of someone who had worked on both sides of the recording booth. His affection for the medium remained apparent, even when its history required criticism.
Fighting for Coyote vs. Acme
One of Bauza's final major theatrical projects was Coyote vs. Acme, a live-action and animated film directed by Dave Green and starring Will Forte and John Cena.
Bauza recalled in a 2026 oral history published by The Ringer that his involvement began with a cast table read over Zoom. He had not auditioned for the film, and his characters arrived only later in the script. When he finally began speaking as the Looney Tunes characters, he noticed Forte's reaction. Forte, in the same oral history, praised Bauza's ability to take on voices so closely associated with Mel Blanc.
The film follows Wile E. Coyote as he takes legal action against the Acme Corporation after years of suffering injuries caused by its unreliable products.
Despite completing production, Warner Bros. announced in November 2023 that it would shelve the film. The decision prompted criticism from filmmakers, animation professionals and fans, many of whom called for its release.
Bauza became an outspoken supporter of the campaign. During the 2024 Annie Awards, he appealed for the film's release while performing as Daffy Duck, drawing applause from the audience.
He promoted the #ReleaseCoyoteVsACME campaign on social media and discussed the film's uncertain future in interviews. In an August 2026 oral history published by The Ringer, Bauza recalled calling director Dave Green immediately after learning that Ketchup Entertainment had acquired the film, seeking confirmation that the news was real. He also discussed the possibility of completed films being withheld from audiences.
The film was eventually acquired by Ketchup Entertainment and reached theatres on August 28, 2026. Bauza voiced multiple Looney Tunes characters, including Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Elmer Fudd and Foghorn Leghorn.
Remembering Eric Bauza
Following Bauza's death, colleagues from across the animation industry shared memories of working with him.
Jorge R. Gutiérrez, who had helped give Bauza his breakthrough role in El Tigre, recalled meeting him in 2003 and described the actor as someone who improved every production he joined. Other performers, including John Cena, Jack Quaid and Vincent Martella, also paid tribute to his talent and generosity.
In a joint statement, Warner Bros. Television Group and U.S. Networks chair Channing Dungey and Warner Bros. Pictures Animation president Bill Damaschke described Bauza as a treasured colleague and recognized his work continuing the Looney Tunes tradition.
Bauza frequently spoke about his good fortune in performing characters that had entertained audiences for generations. In a 2026 interview with The Associated Press, he acknowledged that the Looney Tunes had existed long before his birth and would continue beyond his lifetime.
Bauza's own son could distinguish the two performers. In a 2022 interview with POV Magazine, Bauza recalled being summoned across the schoolyard to deliver Bugs Bunny's familiar greeting for his son's friends, who then dismissed him once they had heard it. Shortly before the release of Coyote vs. Acme, Bauza told The Associated Press that these characters predated him and would outlast him. "I just feel like the luckiest guy," he said.
