Bill Fagerbakke

Looks as destiny

Bill Fagerbakke stands nearly six feet seven, and his voice sounds like a friendly thunder that rumbles through the walls. He never planned to make a living acting, because his real goal was professional American football. At the University of Idaho, he played defensive line with an aggressiveness that contrasted with his calm personality.

A knee injury in 1977 took him off the field for good and pushed him toward the campus theater department. It wasn't a mystical career calling but a practical way out for someone who could no longer chase a ball.

It was the end of a dream and the start of a million-dollar business.

Moving to New York in the eighties was a reality check. He cut his diet down to the basics while looking for openings in Broadway productions. In 1983 he managed to debut in the musical Doonesbury, but the film industry eyed him warily because of his size. Casting directors didn't know where to fit a giant who didn't want to play the villain.

In 1989, he landed the role that gave him financial stability for almost a decade. He played Dauber Dybinski in the comedy Coach. His character was an assistant coach who wasn't the brightest but had a huge heart. He accepted the job knowing he would be typecast as the big, dim-witted guy for the rest of his career.

The Animation Goldmine

Stephen Hillenburg called him in 1998 for an experimental project about a sponge that lived under the sea. Fagerbakke read the script for SpongeBob SquarePants and thought it was utterly nonsensical. But he needed the money from the pilot, so he recorded Patrick Star's lines with exaggerated slowness.

And the gamble paid off.

What was supposed to be a one-off voice job turned into a steady gig that has now lasted more than twenty-five years. The key to his performance was removing any trace of malice from the voice. Patrick isn't stupid out of wickedness but out of an almost childlike purity that connects with audiences of all ages.

In 2005, he won back the audience's affection in the live-action series How I Met Your Mother. He played Marvin Eriksen, Marshall's father, for several seasons. His unexpected dramatic exit from the series in 2011 is still remembered as one of the saddest moments in modern television. The episode drew ten million viewers during its first broadcast in the United States.

But the actor never abandoned recording studios. Because voice is an asset that doesn't age on camera. In 2021, Nickelodeon decided to expand the universe of his most famous character with The Patrick Star Show.

This production posed a different technical challenge for the actor. He no longer shared a booth with the rest of the cast to encourage improvisation. In 2022, the sessions were recorded in isolation to make it easier to edit the fast-paced dialogue later.

It's a mechanical and not very glamorous process.

Fagerbakke appeared in 2023 in several episodes of Young Sheldon, playing a police officer. Despite his longevity in the industry, he prefers to keep a low profile at his California home. His current voice-acting contracts for 2024 include exclusivity clauses that limit his appearances at fan conventions. The pay for each animated episode exceeds thirty thousand dollars gross per half-day session.