Eric Bauza, the modern voice of Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck, dies at 46

Eric Bauza, the voice actor who for the better part of a decade supplied the voices of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig and dozens of other Looney Tunes characters, died Sunday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 46.

His family announced the death in a statement posted to his social media accounts, saying he had "passed away suddenly" and describing him as the "modern voice of iconic 'Looney Tunes' characters Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck, along with dozens of other beloved cartoon characters," according to a report from NBC News. The family did not immediately offer a cause.

What the medical examiner found

The Los Angeles County medical examiner's office later attributed Bauza's death to hypertensive cardiovascular disease and classified it as natural, a determination The Washington Post confirmed alongside NBC News. Bauza's longtime manager, Judy Coppage, said in a statement carried by both outlets that he had died at his residence.

"Eric was a unique and versatile voice actor who was loved by everyone he knew and worked with. His sudden passing is a shock to all of us, and he will be deeply missed."

Word of the death spread quickly through the animation community over the weekend, with fellow voice actors and animators posting tributes through Sunday night and into Monday morning.

Two decades inside the Looney Tunes vault

Bauza was born Dec. 7, 1979, in Scarborough, Ontario, a Toronto suburb, to parents who had immigrated from the Philippines. He broke into voice acting in the early 2000s, building a résumé that eventually ran to hundreds of credits, including Puss in Boots in Nickelodeon's "The Adventures of Puss in Boots," Stimpy in the adult-oriented "Ren & Stimpy" revival, Splinter in "Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles," Fozzie Bear in "Muppet Babies" and both a Belcher patriarch and a rival restaurateur on "Bob's Burgers."

His signature run began in 2020, when he took over as the primary voice of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Elmer Fudd, Marvin the Martian, Tweety and Woody Woodpecker for "Looney Tunes Cartoons" and the franchise's subsequent spinoffs. In doing so, he became what he told NBC News at the time was the first voice actor of color to play Bugs Bunny in the character's history, a milestone he said drew him letters of support from Filipino and other Asian American fans. He later voiced Diddy Kong in "The Super Mario Bros. Movie" and reprised several Tune Squad roles in "Space Jam: A New Legacy."

The work brought three Children's and Family Emmy Awards over three years — for "Looney Tunes Cartoons," "Bugs Bunny Builders" and "Teen Titans Go!" — plus a nomination this year for "Daffy in Wackyland" and two earlier Annie Award nominations. Bauza was also a semi-regular guest at comic conventions, where his live impressions of the full Looney Tunes roster, switching voices mid-sentence, became a signature bit.

Bauza's path to the role ran through children's television rather than through Termite Terrace itself. His breakthrough came years earlier on Nickelodeon's "El Tigre: The Adventures of Manny Rivera," and BlogTO reported that the show's creator, Jorge Gutierrez, had pushed network executives to cast him after concluding that a Filipino Canadian performer did a more convincing Mexican accent than any of the Mexican actors who had auditioned. By the time Warner Bros. was looking for a new primary Bugs Bunny in the late 2010s, Bauza had already spent a decade cycling through dozens of animated series, making him a natural successor to performers such as Mel Blanc, the character's original voice, and later interpreters including Joe Alaskey, who died in 2016.

A franchise mid-revival

Bauza's death lands in the middle of an unusually active stretch for the characters he spent years voicing. He played Daffy Duck and Porky Pig in "The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie," the franchise's first theatrical feature in decades, and voiced Wile E. Coyote in "Coyote vs. Acme," a long-finished film Warner Bros. nearly shelved for a tax write-down before a public fan campaign and a later distribution deal carried it into theaters. Both releases were part of a broader push by the studio's animation division to put its legacy characters back on the big screen after years confined to streaming shorts and games.

That push now continues without the performer who had become those characters' default voice for an entire generation of young viewers. No replacement has been named for any of Bauza's roles, and Warner Bros.' animation arm had made no public comment as of Monday morning.

Reaction and what comes next

Tributes came from across the voice-acting field over the weekend, with colleagues describing Bauza as generous with younger performers and unusually devoted to getting each character's cadence right. Philippine outlets, including GMA Network, noted his standing as one of the most prominent Filipino Canadian performers working in American animation, a point of pride he had spoken about in interviews throughout his career. Coverage from KTLA, the Los Angeles station that first carried the family's statement locally, noted that the news reached fans largely through social media before any studio confirmation followed.

For a franchise built on recasting — Bugs Bunny alone has passed through several voices since Blanc's death in 1989 — Bauza's death raises an immediate, practical question without an immediate answer: who speaks for Bugs Bunny next. Warner Bros.' animation unit, now operating under Paramount Skydance following that company's completed takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery earlier this month, has given no timeline for naming a successor or for how in-production episodes featuring Bauza's recorded dialogue will be handled.

• Died: Sunday, Oct. 25, 2026, at his Los Angeles home
• Age: 46
• Cause: Hypertensive cardiovascular disease, ruled natural by the Los Angeles County medical examiner
• Recent credits: "Coyote vs. Acme" and "The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie"

No memorial service has been announced. Bauza's three Emmy-winning performances and his nominated turn in "Daffy in Wackyland" remain in competition for next year's Children's and Family Emmy ceremony, where any recognition would now be posthumous. Forbes contributor Tim Lammers, who has covered the Looney Tunes revival closely, noted that Bauza had recorded enough material across his various series that new episodes featuring his performances are expected to continue airing for some time.