Mary Kay Bergman

**Mary Kay Bergman** (June 5, 1961 – November 11, 1999), initially credited on *South Park* as **Shannen Cassidy**, was an American voice actress and voice-over teacher.

Born in Los Angeles, she had an interest in fantasy and animation early in her life. She acted in plays in high school and also studied theater at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). After unsuccessful acting jobs, she was considering a career in the Air Force, when "going wild" on karaoke at a housewarming party changed her life.

In 1989, she began voicing the Disney character Snow White. Bergman is widely known for her voice work in the earliest seasons of *South Park* and *The Fairly OddParents*. She did voice work for over 400 television commercials and voiced over 100 cartoon, film and video game characters throughout her career.

Bergman was married to voice actor Dino Andrade before she killed herself in November 1999. Shortly after her death, Andrade established the Mary Kay Bergman Memorial Fund.

The origins of Bergman's voice acting can be traced to when she attended a housewarming party at one of her co-workers' houses. Someone brought a karaoke machine to the party and Bergman started "going wild", using several different voices. One of the guests at the party was studying with voice-over coach Kat Lehman and suggested she take a class with his teacher, which she did.[1]

Bergman took many voice-over classes in order to do many different styles and voices. Some specialized in animation, some in ADR/looping, and others in commercial and improvisation. Bergman studied the voice of a character if she was matching a voice.[15][16] Bergman stated that accents came very easily to her. She stated that she enjoyed doing accents such as Chinese, Japanese, Australian, English, American, French, German, Spanish and Italian.[15]

In 1994,[17] Bergman started teaching the technique of doing voice-overs for animation at the Kalmenson and Kalmenson Studios in Burbank, California.[8][15] After voicing the villain Dr. Blight on the series *Captain Planet and the Planeteers*, replacing Meg Ryan, she acquired a reputation for voice matching and began doing these matches for other actors such as Jodie Foster, Gillian Anderson, Helen Hunt, Julia Roberts, Jennifer Tilly, Emma Thompson, and Alfre Woodard.[18]

Bergman worked on over 400 television commercials, including the voice of Mrs. Butterworth in Mrs. Butterworth's syrup commercials. She had roles in many Disney films, including *Beauty and the Beast*, as the Bimbettes; *The Hunchback of Notre Dame*, as Quasimodo's mother; *Hercules*, as several female characters; *Mulan*, as the female ancestors; and the posthumously released *Toy Story 2*, in which she is credited under "additional voices." Her video game roles included *The Curse of Monkey Island* and the English version of *Tenchu 2: Birth of the Stealth Assassins*.

She worked on other series including *Jay Jay the Jet Plane*, *Oh Yeah! Cartoons*, *The Fairly OddParents*, and several female voices in *The Tick* animated series. She also provided the voice of Gwen Stacy in the final episode of *Spider-Man*. Bergman voiced the Scooby-Doo character Daphne Blake in *Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island*(1998), *Scooby-Doo! and the Witch's Ghost* (1999) and *Scooby-Doo and the Alien Invaders* (2000), this last one being a posthumous release and final film role, dedicated to her. Her other film role was in *Balto II: Wolf Quest* (2002), released three years after her death, in which she voiced a vixen and a wolverine.