I can do Matt Berry. I’ve seen one other person do him. I can do Jason Statham better then Seth Green (Who does him in a movie they did together)
My Morgan Freeman is pretty spot on since I’m not a very old black man.
I can do a micro impression of Gene Hackman saying his own name. Same with “Burt…Lannnnncastuh.” Hilariously there’s a ton of people over 45 who can do James Maaaaason
I did a lot of different voices when I was working on the radio back in the '90s. I lost count after I hit 70. (The voices, not my age.)
I taped a series of commercials with celebrities plugging a carpet company:
Queen Elizabeth II
Sean Connery (as James Bond)
William Shatner (as Captain Kirk)
James Doohan (as Montgomery Scott)
Mr T (as BA Baracus)
Elvis Presley (The King!)
Guido Prosciutto (aka “Guido the Gangster”)
I wanted to do one with Homer Simpson (“What’s good enough for Donald Trump is good enough for me!”), but we never got around to it.
Other voices making their appearance included
Ross Perot
Richard Nixon
Boris Yeltsin
Mike Tyson
Ricky Ricardo
Marlin Perkins (as “Marlin Jerkins”)
George “Kingfish” Stevens
Andrew H Brown
Col Wilhelm Klink
Sgt Hans Schultz
Cpl Louis LeBeau
Beavis and Butt-Head
Sean Patrick Joseph John Seamus O’Donnell (“Call me Murphy. Everybody calls me Murphy.”) came around every St Patrick’s Day.
Ou (the station’s Indian unpaid intern)
Jesus Trinidad (in from LA).
But my favorite was having William Shatner read the weather forecast. (“The weather … for tomorrow … calls for … cloudy skies. A chance of … precipitation. Expect an overnight low … of around five degrees Celsius. A high temperature tomorrow … of around twelve degrees…”)
Their Caine-impression competition is one of my favourite bits of TV ever.
I’m no good at impressions really, but have developed a reasonable quavering, elderly David Attenborough voice, mainly to amuse myself when reading the same book to my young son for the umpteenth time.
The only impression I can do is Milton from Office Space.
“I kept my Swingline stapler because it didn’t bind up as much, and I kept the staples for the Swingline stapler and it’s not okay because if they take my stapler then I’ll set the building on fire.”
Other than that, I am absolutely horrible at impressions.
In Basic training, Drill Sgt. Gallimore was a real character. He would call people yardbirds, he would answer questions with “No stooopid” and “You can’t have it your way, this ain’t Arby’s,” he would sometimes take one of the recruit’s hats and put it on to try to make Drill Sgt. Hall break while in the middle of a block of instructions, and all kind of other crazy stuff. His voice and intonation were so distinctive that when drills weren’t around, everyone tried mimicking him. Towards the end of Basic, Sgt. Hall is putting masking tape with numbers on them onto the recruits’ helmets so we could be identifiable for final training when someone asked a dumb question. Without hesitation, I yelled out “No stooopid” in my best Gallimore voice and Hall stopped dead in his tracks and looked around.
“Who said that?” he glared around the bay.
I thought we were all in deep shit at that point. Like “everyone do pushups until I’m tired” kind of shit. I didn’t want to make the rest of the platoon suffer for my smart assedness though so I spoke up.
“I did, Drill Sergeant!” I replied.
Sgt. Hall looked right at me for a moment then said “Damn, you sound just like Gallimore” and then went back to working on the helmets.
I do lots of voices when reading stories to my son. I’ve been able to do a wide variety of voices forever, but reading the stories has made me hone them. What I can’t do much of is impressions.
However, I can do passable imitations of a variety of Disney characters. I’ve got a pretty deep voice, so I’ve always been good at Goofy and Tigger for example.
To my great surprise, I can do Mickey Mouse perfectly. I’m still rather shocked at myself every time it comes out.
I do very, very good impressions of the most obscure people so no one knows if I’m doing it well or not. Or that I’m doing an impression at all. And I do them all the time. People just think I’m weird. Here’s two–
“Come, come, Algebra!” Stymie from Our Gang talking to their mule and “What’s these? Spaghetti?” The commercial director ridiculing Alice’s hair on The Brady Bunch.
Back in college, my gaming group once did a Call of Cthulhu campaign in which we played Karloff, Lugosi, Lorre, and Vincent Price. You never heard so many bad celebrity impressions in your life!
I do a bad J-J-Jimmy St-St-Stewart. Also, Sherman, but only one line, “Jeepers, Mr. Peabody!” I have a Wally & Beav routine, but who they are wouldn’t be apparent without saying their names.
