Benoît Rousseau, The Simpsons and King of the Hill Voice Actor, Dies at 66
Your favorite characters don’t just speak English. Around the world, a booming dubbing industry is reinventing beloved series in dozens of languages, powered by a vast, unsung chorus of creators and voice actors.
We lost a pillar of Quebec dubbing. Benoît Rousseau, a go-to voice for some of the biggest animated shows and Hollywood stars, has died at 66 after a battle with cancer. If you grew up with French-language versions of The Simpsons, South Park, or King of the Hill, you absolutely heard him — probably in more than one role.
The news came from the Union des Artistes, which shared a tribute highlighting just how much ground he covered over the years.
"We learned with sadness the death of actor, stuntman, set director, adaptor and musician Benoit Rousseau. Known by the general public for dubbing the voices of Nicolas Cage and Dwayne Johnson among others in cinema, and more especially in Quebec of the voices of Mr. Burns and Abraham Simpson in The Simpsons series, on which he worked for over 30 years. Our deepest thoughts go out to his relatives, family and his colleagues."
The voice you kept hearing (often in the same episode)
- The Simpsons (Quebec): Mr. Burns, Grampa/Abraham Simpson, Lenny, and Duffman — and he kept at it for more than 30 years
- King of the Hill: Dale Gribble, Hank's paranoid, chain-smoking buddy
- South Park: both Mr. Garrison and Chef — wildly different characters, same guy behind the mic
- Toy Story series: Hamm, the sarcastic piggy bank
- Animated and animated-adjacent films: Team America: World Police, The Emperor's New Groove, Batman: Mask of the Phantasm, Rio, Kung Fu Panda, The Incredibles
- Live-action dubbing: regular French-Canadian voice for Nicolas Cage and Dwayne Johnson — specifically Cage in The Rock, Johnson in Get Smart, and Benicio Del Toro in Traffic
- Video games: contributions to the Assassin's Creed series and the Fallout series
On top of acting, Rousseau's resume was stacked: stuntman, set director, adaptor, and musician. That 'adaptor' credit is the behind-the-scenes job of tailoring scripts so jokes, rhythms, and lip-sync actually work in another language — a huge part of why these dubs click.
Rousseau's range was the kind you only appreciate once you start listing it out: the icy drip of Mr. Burns, the wobbly warmth of Grampa, Dale's twitchy conspiracies, Garrison's chaos, Chef's smooth baritone — plus Hamm's dry punchlines. All the while, he was also the French-Canadian voice audiences associated with Nicolas Cage and Dwayne Johnson on the big screen.
It's a major loss for the dubbing community and for anyone who ever laughed along with these characters in French. Condolences to Benoît Rousseau's family, friends, and colleagues.