Creator. Director. Producer. Performer. Writer. Actor. Icon. All this and more describes the one and only Frank Oz.
As a respected director, Frank has helmed more than a dozen films, including The Dark Crystal (1982) (co-directed with fellow Disney Legend Jim Henson), The Muppets Take Manhattan (1984), Little Shop of Horrors (1986), Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (1988), Touchstone Pictures’ What About Bob? (1991), In & Out (1997), Bowfinger (1999), The Score (2001), Death at a Funeral (2007), Muppet Guys Talking (2017), and others, as well as the 2021 Hulu presentation of the long-running Off-Broadway hit he also directed, Derek DelGaudio’s In & Of Itself.
A four-time Emmy® Award winner, Frank is the recipient of the Art Directors Guild’s Outstanding Contribution to Cinematic Imagery Award, the American Comedy Awards’ Creative Achievement Award, The Saturn Lifetime Achievement Award, two George Foster Peabody Awards, three Gold Records, two Platinum Records, and a host of other accolades and honors.
He originated and performed the characters of Grover, Bert, and Cookie Monster for Sesame Street, along with Miss Piggy, Fozzie Bear, Sam Eagle, and Animal for The Muppet Show, performing in hundreds of television shows and specials with The Muppets—including Jim Henson’s Muppet*Vision 3D for Disney Parks. Frank first met Jim Henson in 1963 when he was 17 years old. Later, at 19, as a freshman at Oakland City College, he left behind his intention to be a journalist to join Jim in New York, where Jim spent many years teaching him how to perform The Muppets before Frank could begin to create his own characters. “Frank was clearly Jim’s co-collaborator, and they were an amazing pairing,” longtime Muppets colleague Dave Goelz has observed. “Jim had a visual sense, Frank a character one. Jim had a lightness, Frank had a seriousness, so they were opposites who complemented each other tremendously. Wild inspiration, silliness, and fun from Jim, underpinning and depth of storytelling from Frank. They were each able to do both, but generally, it was an outgrowth of their personalities.” Jim often credited Frank with making The Muppets funny.
Frank traveled beyond The Muppets to a galaxy far, far away when, after Jim Henson recommended him to fellow future Disney Legend George Lucas, he originated and performed the character of Yoda for Lucas’ Star Wars films, first in The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and then in Return of the Jedi (1983), The Phantom Menace (1999), Attack of the Clones (2002), Revenge of the Sith (2005), The Last Jedi (2017), and The Rise of Skywalker (2019). As for Yoda’s unique manner of speech, Frank reveals that “George and [screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan] wrote the backwards language, but it was only used part of the time, so I asked George if I could do that all of the time.” When asked if he gets tired of all the bad Yoda imitations, Frank replies, “No I’m used to it. But people don’t understand; anyone can do a voice. It’s not the voice—it’s the soul.”
The multi-hyphenate also boasts an impressive list of acting credits across several iconic live-action movies, from The Blues Brothers (1980) to Knives Out (2019), and has voiced characters in Disney and Pixar’s Monsters, Inc. (2001), Inside Out (2015), and Inside Out 2 (2024). But it is as an acclaimed director that Frank has found the fulfillment of artistic vision. “As an actor and a performer, you always feel limited because you’re not the source of the creation, and I wanted to be the source,” Frank has said. “I wanted to be the guy and give my view of the world. And if I screw it up, I screw it up, but at least I tried. And as a director… you’re showing the audience your view of the world. I don’t know why, but I thought I saw things a certain way, and I wanted to express that to others.”
When it comes to collaborating with a film’s cast and crew, Frank’s directorial priority is to foster a playful atmosphere of creativity. “Jim Henson, who I worked with for so long, taught me this,” Frank explains. “The best thing is to have fun, and the best stuff comes out of playing. You don’t want people to shut down; you want them to blossom. You want to have an expansive atmosphere that inspires ideas. The ideas of the cast and crew [enrich a] film enormously.” Frank adds, “I’ve always enjoyed, more than anything else in the world, bringing things to life, whether it’s characters or actors in a scene or moments in movies. I just love to see things bubble. When a single moment or a look comes alive, becomes real and believable and funny or moving, that’s the joy.”