Phil Morris’ Journey from ‘Seinfeld’ to Voiceover Success Story

January 30, 2025 | Neil Turitz

It’s okay if you know Phil Morris from his five episodes as flamboyant attorney Jackie Chiles on Seinfeld, but even though that was a momentous role for the actor and it changed his life, the last time he played that part was more than 25 years ago.

He’s done literally hundreds of other roles since, in a career that spans more than four decades, so there’s obviously a lot more to him than that. Over the last quarter century, while Morris still works plenty in front of the camera, he has become a very successful voice actor, as well, voicing video games, animated TV shows and movies, and more than once working as a substitute for Eddie Murphy. Yes, really. That should tell you just how much of a badass Phil Morris is. He spoke to us from his home in Los Angeles.


Insights: Lessons From Phil Morris
  • Draw from your own life and interests to add depth to your characters, as Morris did with his knowledge of comics and martial arts.
  • Expand your range by exploring different types of acting, including voice work, and continually seek to improve your skills.
  • To succeed in voice acting, focus on embodying the character, not just having a good voice. Acting workshops can help develop this skill.

How did you become an actor in the first place?

My father’s Greg Morris, who was in the original Mission: Impossible series in the ‘60s. He was the electronics wizard that Ving Rhames now affects in the movies. So I’ve been around it my whole life. When the show started, it was 1966, I was seven. So it changed our lives exponentially, like overnight, and I was introduced to an entirely new world of entertainment and high-level television. At first, I resisted its until I had an experience with my dad on location when I was 17, just out of high school. It was an Air Force film that never got completed, called Contact 303 with my father, Billy Dee Williams, Henry Fonda, Chad Everett, Merle Haggard, Buck Henry. They did all the exteriors on location in the Mojave Desert. When they came back to Paramount, they really had no money left, which is why I think it was there specifically for me to get started. I got back to LA, I went to an acting class and I haven’t looked back.

You had already been working steadily for two decades when you first showed up on Seinfeld as Jackie Chiles in 1995. It was the number one show on TV, back when that meant tens of millions of people watching. What did that do for your career?

It was great. Seinfeld was so in the zeitgeist, so there were more eyes on that than anything I’d ever done. Most people looked at me as a dramatic actor, and if I was in a comedy, I was mainly a setup guy, a straight man. I think I was a really funny guy in real life, but I was so concerned with significance in my acting career, it was hard for me to be funny on camera. It’s really hard to let go and be funny when you’re looking at yourself. You know, comedic characters have no idea they’re being funny, and that’s what’s funny about them, right? But you have to loosen up your gear in order to get to that place, and it took me a minute to get there. Jackie Chiles was such a great dynamic character for me. It allowed me to fly freely.

Did the character come naturally to you?

I remember one time distinctly on set after we read the first script at the table, we’re going to rehearse with director Andy Ackerman. Jerry’s sitting there off set, he’s not directing, just sitting there watching. You’ve got five days to do the show, I’ve never done Jackie before, and I’m trying to figure out, how do I do him? What are the setups? The rhythms? I’m working on stuff, and Jerry just goes, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, what are you doing?” I said, “Well, you know, I got five days, man, to figure this guy out. I gotta work on some stuff.” He goes, “Whoa, nope, nope, nope, nope. I need you to be exactly the way you were when you were in my office, when you got the job. Can you do that?” I’m like, “Oh, hell yes, I can do that.” (Laughs) I spent the next five days just grooving that, and that’s what we saw for however many episodes I did.

Obviously, you still do a lot of on-camera work, but you’re also becoming known more and more for your voice acting. How did you transition into that field?

My sister Iona, who was the original voice of Storm when the X-Men cartoon first came out, before they moved all the voices to Canada and shipped out all the work away from the United States, she was always telling me, man, you got a good voice. You should get voiceover work. I always said, I’m a face guy, right? That’s what we call on-camera actors, so I never really followed that thread. Then one day, my agent said, there’s a role at Disney for this movie, The Legend of Mulan. They wanted somebody to approximate what Eddie Murphy would do as Mushu the dragon, so the animators could get started on their process. Eddie was not going to be involved with this project for three years, which is what it takes for traditional animation features to realize themselves. So I would come in and I would approximate what Eddie would do. They’d give me Eddie’s scratch and then I would do his dialogue. So I got that job, then a show called The PJs came up.

I remember that. The guy who did the California Raisins commercials, right?

That whole thing. Eddie was the lead of this incredibly funny, urban, animated comedy. But he didn’t feel like doing every episode. So they knew I’d done this thing for Disney and thinking that I’m the Eddie Murphy guy. I’m not, I’m just a dude who would approximate what Eddie would do, right? So I come in and I auditioned for them and I get it. So now I’m doing The PJs in a separate booth from the entire cast so that if Eddie wants to do it, they will just lift my voice out and put his in. So if you watch The PJs, there’s a bunch of times where Thurgood sounds just a little bit different. That’s me. Anyway, to answer your question, that got me into voiceovers. I’ve never taken a voiceover class. I don’t think I ever will. It’s all acting. It’s just a different medium.

You’ve played your share of known characters in animation. I’m curious if there is an added level of pressure to that, playing somebody people already know from one medium or another, like the DC Comics characters you’ve played.

I’m a card-carrying comic book guy. I have 20,000 comics in long boxes, so I know these guys. I went in for Young Justice, and they start saying, okay, explain to Phil about the universe. And I go, whoa, whoa, let’s not waste any time on explaining something I already know. Let’s test-drive these voices and see how they sound. They were flabbergasted. No actors ever know this. I worked with Tom Welling on Smallville. He had no idea about the Superman mythos, zero. None. I know these guys. I grew up with them. I live with them. So there’s no one who needs to be satisfied more than I do.

Do you have a favorite of those experiences?

I did Saint Walker for the Green Lantern series. The first Blue Lantern, right? He’s an amazing character. I get there and I’m like, “Guys, this character’s amazing. What were your thoughts about him?” Well, you know, he’s like a martial arts master. And I go, “Were you reading my background? I’m in two halls of fame for martial arts.” They go, no, they didn’t know that. They just felt from my essence that I could approximate this character. So those are the things that are so beautiful about what we do and where like your real life really finds a nexus with your professional life.

If someone wanted to get into voice acting, what advice would you give them?

Find a good acting workshop. There’s plenty of them, wherever you are. You have to go and figure out whether or not you can take a character and make them your own and live in their skin. You’ve got to get on stage or in front of a mic and express this character to the world. That’s where sometimes the disconnect happens. Because yes, you can have a good voice. You can be very funny with all your friends and your parents can think you’re the cutest thing since sliced bread, but if you can’t express the inner workings of this character so that it’s resonant to an audience, you’re not an actor. You have to start with figuring out what it is that you have to say, and read, read, keep reading, keep exposing yourself to so many different things. Go to class to learn about the work, and then go out and live life. Race cars, climb mountains, swim oceans, love people, eat good food, travel the world, expose yourself to different cultures, music, and then you’ll find out what you have to say.

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