Who is Ben Whitehead, the new voice of Wallace in Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl?
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Wallace and Gromit fans, rejoice: the dynamic duo are finally heading back to screens. For decades the role of Wallace was played by Peter Sallis. He was creator Nick Park’s first choice, and Park first wrote to Sallis offering the role in 1983. But Sallis died in 2017, leaving a void at the heart of one of Britain’s most loved animated duos.
So with a new Wallace and Gromit heading to our screens on Christmas Day, who is voicing the claymation madcap inventor? Step forward, Ben Whitehead. The actor is voicing Wallace for his first full-length feature film, the excellently-titled Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl.
It’s obvious that he’s excited about it. “I was 14 when A Grand Day Out came out in 1989," he told Radio Times about the role. "I was a huge fan and did a Wallace voice to entertain people. Not in my wildest dreams did I think that one day I’d 'be' him.".
So who is he, and what should we know?. Unlike the London born and bred Sallis, Whitehead does have a connection to the North: his father is from Yorkshire (though Wallace and Gromit, of course, is set in Lancashire). But he was born in Cheshire in 1977 and trained to be an actor.
As a Wallace and Gromit fan, he grew up doing voices, accents and impressions – and when a friend in Bristol, who was working with Aardman, needed some actors to help cast the Were-Rabbit film, Whitehead jumped at the chance. "I had to get down there in two hours. I don’t think I’ve hung up the phone that quickly before, and luckily I was in the West Country,” he told PA Media.
