Frank Oz
Frank Oz
Frank Ozis an English-born American filmmaker, puppeteer, and actor. His career began as a puppeteer, where he performed the Muppet characters of Miss Piggy and Fozzie Bear in The Muppet Show, and Cookie Monster, Bert, and Grover in Sesame Street. He is also known for being the puppeteer and voice of Yoda in the Star Wars films...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPuppeteer
Date of Birth25 May 1944
CityHereford, England
CountryUnited States of America
Early must I rise. Leave now you must!
Down here, I am. Find a ladder, I must!
Girls and sports. That was the interest, mainly. I never wanted to be a puppeteer.
Nobody else could do that kind of writing?. He was the Muppet writer.
Mmm. Lost a planet, Master Obi-Wan has. How embarrassing. How embarrassing.
I looked up to him because I was just a kid and this guy was actually doing the real work,
Truly wonderful, the mind of a child is.
There's a few movies I wanted to do, and I didn't get to do them partly because they wanted me to be part of the horse and pony show, getting the money, and I'm just not doing that. There's a few movies that people wanted me to do, but they were too safe.
'The Stepford Wives' was too big, and it was unsatisfying to do. Not that it was unsatisfying to do, but it was unsatisfying as a result because, as much as I loved parts of it, and I'm really proud of so much of it, the entire movie wasn't what I wanted it to be. It's my own fault; I didn't follow my instincts.
The power of the 'Muppets,' and the popularity of these characters, is so iconic in people's lives that I had to distance myself from publicly. Not privately... Privately, hell, I'm with them for life, and I love these people. They're my second family.
Oakland Technical High School. Like any high-school experience, it was ambiguous. I was shy with girls; I had friends, but there were times I didn't feel I had the right friends. My grades were only so-so.
I'm not politically committed at all in the popular sense; that is, to any party. I'm committed to whatever's best for the normal working person. I'm not a great fan of politics.
I never wanted to be a puppeteer. I stopped puppeteering when I was about 18. I puppeteered when I was eleven years old to 18 to make extra money to go to Europe, which I made half of and my parents gave me half.
I bought a tape recorder and some stuff and went to Europe for three months when I was 18. The puppeteering was only there as a hobby. I wanted to be a journalist. When I was 19, and after I had spent about a year in college, Jim Henson asked me to come out and try puppeteering for awhile.