Michael Craig Judge (born October 17, 1962) is an American animator, actor, voice actor, writer, director, and producer, best-known as the creator and star of the hit animated television series Beavis and Butt-head and King of the Hill. He also wrote and directed the films Beavis and Butt-Head Do America, Office Space, and Idiocracy.
Born in Guayaquil, Ecuador, Judge was raised in Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA, where he attended St. Pius X High School. He is the son of anthropologist Jim Judge and teacher/librarian Margaret Blue. Judge graduated with a Bachelor of Science in physics in 1985 from the University of California, San Diego. Mike Judge currently lives in Austin, Texas. Judge also plays bass guitar, occasionally sitting in with bands.
In 1991, Judge's short "Office Space" (also known as the Milton series of shorts) was picked up by Comedy Central following a Dallas animation festival.
In 1992, Judge developed "Frog Baseball", a short featuring the characters Beavis and Butt-head, to be featured on Liquid Television. The short led to the creation of the Beavis and Butt-head series on MTV, in which Judge voiced both title characters as well as the majority of supporting characters. Beavis and Butt-head attended Highland High School in their series, which is the name of a high school in Albuquerque, New Mexico (USA), the city in which Judge grew up. The show ran from 1993 to 1997 and spawned a feature-length film, Beavis and Butt-head Do America, released in 1996. To this day they are still arguably Judge's most popular characters.
In 1997, Judge left MTV to create King of the Hill for Fox. Many of the show's characters were based on people he had known while living in Texas. Judge continued his voice acting, playing both Hank Hill and Boomhauer.
In 1999, Judge wrote and directed the live-action comedy film Office Space, which was based in part on the Milton series of cartoons he had created for Saturday Night Live. In the film, he made a cameo appearance as Stan, the manager of Chotchkie's (complete with hairpiece and fake mustache). The film, for which the budget was approximately US$10 million, grossed only $10.8 million in initial release. However, as of mid-2006, Office Space had sold nearly six million video and DVD copies.
He also provided the voice for Kenny in South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut when Kenny says "Goodbye you guys".
Since Fall 2003, Judge has run a very successful animation festival, together with animator Don Hertzfeldt, called "The Animation Show". He even created an appearance for Beavis and Butt-head featured in The Animation Show 2007. "The Animation Show" tours the country every year, screening animated shorts from mostly independent animators.
Judge's most recent film, Idiocracy, a dystopian comedy starring Luke Wilson and Maya Rudolph, was given a limited release by 20th Century Fox in September 2006, two years after production. The film was released without a trailer or substantial marketing campaign. In the US, the film was released to DVD in January 2007, later airing on Cinemax in September 2007 and HBO networks in January 2008. Since then, it has gained a somewhat reputable cult following.
Judge has made cameo appearances in numerous films, including Jackass: Number Two, in which he can be seen during the end credits. An extended version can be seen in Jackass 2.5 released straight to video.
Judge also created a clip of Beavis & Butthead ripping into Steve O for his video "Poke the Puss", where the two try imagining if they would like the video better if they were black. It aired on MTV as a part of the jackassworld.com 24 hour takeover.
Judge's next film will be the comedy Extract starring Jason Bateman. The movie is due out sometime in 2009.
