Caroll Spinney
Caroll Spinney
Caroll Edwin Spinneyis an American puppeteer and cartoonist, most famous for playing Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch on Sesame Street. He has sometimes been credited as Carroll Spinney or Ed Spinney...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionCartoonist
Date of Birth26 December 1933
CountryUnited States of America
chatting children face hit liked meet pleased unhappy
I was suffering a divorce, and I was very unhappy because my children were very young. It hit me when a woman, a fan, was chatting with me. She was pleased to meet Big Bird because her children liked him and liked the show, but she didn't know that my face was streamed with tears.
early last life remember week
I have a strong memory of my early childhood. I can remember life before I was two. I remember being toilet-trained like it was last week - and it wasn't last week.
draw few found incredibly seconds
I found out animation is incredibly boring. You draw and draw and draw, and it's only a few seconds done in a week.
billion continue expressing gotten imagine inside lottery love playing thoroughly won
Frankly, I think if I won the lottery and won a billion dollars, I'd still want to continue doing this job. I love expressing myself through it. I've gotten to really love acting. And I've gotten to know Big Bird from the inside out so thoroughly it's like playing my kid. I can't imagine deliberately stopping.
boy class home mom names remember saying smallest
I was called such names as a kid. Being the smallest boy in the class with a name like Caroll. I remember going home and saying to my mom, 'What were you thinking?'
agreed asked bird both characters discovered good head joey last man plays puppeteer time year
I was asked to be on 'The Colbert Report' last year as Big Bird and Oscar. But when we got there, we discovered they wanted both characters on at the same time. Stephen Colbert didn't know one man plays them both. We called Joey Mazzarino, our head writer, who's a very good puppeteer as well. He agreed to zip over and do Oscar.
best designed exaggerate trying
You can exaggerate with puppets. You're not trying to look like real people. The way the Muppets are designed is really appealing. Puppets are best if they're exaggerated creatures.
awful exactly good opposite oscar thinks
I think there's an awful lot of me in Big Bird, but Oscar is pretty much - I think I know how he thinks because he thinks exactly the opposite of what I think is a good way to be.
complete human struggles
Big Bird went through his very human kind of struggles as a child. No other children's character has been that complete and detailed.
based
Big Bird is based on what I learned as a child.
bought built cents collected five good grew knew paid puppet puppeteer scrap wood
When I was eight, I bought my first puppet. It was a monkey, and I paid five cents for it. I collected some scrap wood and built myself a puppet theatre. I made 32 cents with my first show, which I thought was pretty good, and that's when I knew I would be a puppeteer when I grew up.
along bid bird came child created goofy jim learning oscar script teaching useful
When he first started - Jim Henson, who created Bid Bird and Oscar - he said Big Bird was just a big, goofy guy. And it was - a script came along and I said, 'I think Big Bird would be much more useful to the show if he were a child learning all the things we were teaching in the show.' And so he didn't know the alphabet, even, for instance.
good moving singing
The other puppeteers are really good, often when they are singing together, they go left, right, left... But if they are all moving to the left, I'm moving to the right. Big Bird and Oscar, that's okay, because they are individuals anyway.
genuinely half life older played
I've played Big Bird for over half my life, and now I'm in my 80s. It does feel older than 79. Someone said it's just a number, and I said, 'No, I genuinely feel older.'