Jim Meskimen

Jim Meskimen (born September 10, 1959) is an American actor and comedian.

Jim Meskimen is the son of Marion Ross. He attended Taft High in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, where he met his wife, Tamra Shockley. He was the cartoonist for the school newspaper, and also acted in plays.

After high school, he attended the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC). Before that first year was over, he returned home for a time and received training in animation at Hanna-Barbera studios in Hollywood, under the apprenticeship of Harry Love.

Shortly after, he began working for producer Doug Wildey, who had created the original Jonny Quest series. Meskimen was assistant storyboard artist to veteran comic book artist Don Rico on the animated series, Jana of the Jungle.

After a season at Hanna-Barbera, in 1978 Meskimen returned to UCSC to study general subjects, painting, drawing and lithography. He also did parts in plays, but did not take classes in the Drama department, preferring to concentrate on his visual art education.

He studied art history in five courses with Jasper Rose, a fixture at UCSC, who later became the inspiration for an art historian character, Professor Knestor Jackdaws.

In 1983, after living for a time in Madrid on his own, he had an encounter with actor Harvey Keitel and he decided to pursue acting, and moved to New York City.

In New York, he worked as a visual artist, doing illustrations, cartoons and commercial art for various companies. He landed a job designing characters for Rankin/Bass's original series ThunderCats, then in its first season. He worked with producer Jules Bass on expanding the story, and contributed to the ThunderCats "bible."

While working for Rankin/Bass, Meskimen visited one of the recording sessions with actors Bob McFadden, Earl Hammond, Peter Newman, Earl Hyman and others, and began working in radio and TV voiceovers.

He did hundreds of radio and television commercials, and became a series regular on the animated show The Comic Strip, produced by his old employer Rankin/Bass.

He became the voice of several brands in the 1980s and 1990s. He was the voice of the channel that became Comedy Central, (then named HA!) and did campaigns for Swatch Watch as Doctor Swatch, a character he created with marketing head Steven Rechtshaffner.

He lives in Los Angeles with his wife Tamra, who is a co-founder of The Acting Center, an acting school and performance venue in Sherman Oaks, California. They have one daughter, actress, singer and award-winning audio book narrator Taylor Meskimen.