Billy West is without doubt one of the big guys in voice-over business.

After a brief stand up period in his early days, he changed over to the airwaves doing comedy bits at WBCN Radio in Boston in 1980. Moving over to New York City's WXRK in 1989, he was fed up with promoting contests and products. That's when he joined The Howard Stern Radio Show as a part time voice imitator and in 1994 became a 3 days a week regular on the show. Not being able to strike a financial agreement with the production company behind the show, Billy quit the job a year later and moved on to Los Angeles.

Having watched cartoons throughout the late 50s, Billy was always fascinated when he saw that the many dozen voices in a show were usually done by only a handful of people. This devotedness towards cartoons coupled with his voice talent had him going in the business soon after. Out of a few gigs, his starring-as list was soon filled with of well known characters such as both Ren and Stimpy, Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd starting with the feature film "Space Jam", Red M of the M & M's and Woody Woodpecker.

With Fry, Farnsworth and Zoidberg, Billy does a total of 3 main characters on Futurama. He describes Fry's voice as the 25 year old Billy. The role of Zapp Brannigan was offered to him after fellow voice artist and original cast Phil Hartman died in 1998. Throughout the series' run, Billy also voiced a good share of the one time and minor characters including both Bill Clinton's and Richard Nixon's heads.