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B. J. Ward
Ward in 2018
Born	Betty Jean Ward (1944-09-12) September 12, 1944 (age 80) Wilmington, Delaware, U.S.
Occupations	Actress singer
Years active	1960–present
Agent	SBV Talent Agency
Spouses	Donn Trenner ​ ​(m. 1966; div. 1978)​ Gordon Hunt ​ ​(m. 1995; died 2016)​
Website	bjwardnow.com

Betty Jean Ward (born September 12, 1944) is an American actress. She is the creator and the star of Stand-Up Opera, a musical one-woman show.

Personal life

Ward was first married to Donald Trenner in 1966, they divorced in 1978. She was later married to director Gordon Hunt from 1995 until his death in 2016.

Career

Early career

She made her debut on the stage in 1960, in the original off-Broadway production of The Fantasticks, where she was an understudy for the role of Luisa/the Girl. B.J. Ward had gotten the part by calling the producer of the show.

She toured with the Groundlings for a short while before starting her own voice over career starting with Hanna-Barbera's Jana of the Jungle in 1978.

Singing career

Ward also worked as a singer. She is well known for her acclaimed one-woman show, "Stand-Up Opera", which became a massive success with critics and audiences alike. She has released seven albums throughout her singing career.

Though Ward is best known as a voice actress, she has also appeared on television. In 1985, she made a rare film appearance in the television film Malice in Wonderland alongside Elizabeth Taylor and Jane Alexander. She has guest-starred on television series such as Frasier, ER, and In-Laws.

Ward has also done voices for video games and theme parks, including:

• Voices for EPCOT and Disneyland Paris, including the safety narration for Spaceship Earth from 1994 to 2007.
• The narration of the former PeopleMover attraction at Disneyland.
• Mother / Sarah in the 1993 version of the Walt Disney's Carousel of Progress.
• Voice of mother opossum and mother rabbit in the Disneyland version of Splash Mountain (1989–2023)
• The current voice guide for "It's a Small World" and the refurbished Tomorrowland Transit Authority PeopleMover attraction at Magic Kingdom Park.

Filmography

Television

Film

Video games

Discography

• Vocal Ease (1970)
• Queen of the Night (1994)
• Stand-Up Opera (1995)
• Syrinx: Voice of the Songbird (2003)
• B.J. Ward Sings Marshall Barer (2005)
• Double Feature: Love Songs From The Movies (2015)
• Double Feature 2: More Songs From The Movies! (2016)

References

1. ^ Don Heckman (March 13, 1987). "B.J. Ward: She Talks A Good Show". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved January 5, 2017.
2. "Rotten Tomatoes: Movies | TV Shows | Movie Trailers | Reviews - Rotten Tomatoes". Rotten Tomatoes. Archived from the original on May 9, 2022.
3. Steve Marble (December 20, 2016). "Gordon Hunt, director, voice actor and father of Helen Hunt, dies at 87". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved November 14, 2019.
4. "BJ Ward". Retrieved October 7, 2023.
5. ^ "Music". Retrieved November 14, 2019.
6. ^ "BJ Ward (visual voices guide)". Behind The Voice Actors. Retrieved April 30, 2021. A green check mark indicates that a role has been confirmed using a screenshot (or collage of screenshots) of a title's list of voice actors and their respective characters found in its credits or other reliable sources of information.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: postscript (link)

External links

• Official website
• B. J. Ward at IMDb
• B. J. Ward at Voice Chasers Archived 2020-09-15 at the Wayback Machine

• 1944 births
• Living people
• Actresses from Delaware
• American film actresses
• American musical theatre actresses
• American video game actresses
• American voice actresses
• Hanna-Barbera people
• 20th-century American actresses
• 21st-century American actresses
• 20th-century American singers
• 21st-century American singers
• 20th-century American women singers
• 21st-century American women singers