Emmy Award-winning actress Nancy Cartwright is the voice of "Bart" on The Simpsons, the longest-running animated show in history, which just celebrated it's 20th anniversary with a full length feature film, The Simpsons: The Movie. She is the author of My Life as a Ten-Year-Old Boy, the ultimate insider's guide to The Simpsons; and has voiced hundreds of characters in such favorites as Rug Rats, Kim Possible, Richie Rich, The Critic, God,The Devil and Bob, The Pink Panther, Animaniacs, Pinky and the Brain, Toonsylvania, Pound Puppies, My Little Pony, Glo-Friends, and the online cartoon Timber Wolf.

People are always shocked when they find out that the voice behind spiky-headed, yellow-skinned, ten year-old boy Bart Simpson is Nancy Cartwright, a petite blonde woman.

Cartwright is an Emmy Award-winning actress who has been Bart Simpson's voice since the beginning and has been making waves in the entertainment community since she was a little girl. She continues to cultivate her talents on-stage and on-camera, as well as voicing many popular characters in animation.

At the age of ten in Kettering, Ohio, just outside of Dayton, she won an elementary school public speaking contest and got her first big laugh imitating a camel in her recital of Rudyard Kipling's "How the Camel got his Hump." She liked making people laugh and she knew how to do it. "Even then, I figured camels were good for a laugh," she recalls. "Dogs and cats hardly got a smile."

Cartwright had to learn to do camels and other strange sounds and voices early. The fourth of six boisterous children, it was the one way she could be certain of being heard.

She was soon being heard - and seen - regularly throughout Ohio. At 12, she joined a children's theatre company and made her stage debut in An Old Fashioned Christmas. The director asked her to join his summer theatre group and she traveled with them for four years.

While a sophomore at Fairmont West High School, Cartwright did Wait Until Dark with the Centerville Town Hall Players and the next year played the put-upon nurse "Miss Preen" in The Man Who Came to Dinner. She was at the top of her form by her junior year, winning first place in "Humorous Interpretation" in the finals of the National Forensic League. As a senior, she was president of the League at Fairmont West. Upon graduating, she was awarded a scholarship to Ohio University in Athens. During the summer she went to work for WING Radio doing all sorts of beginner jobs, but finally winding up doing local commercials and gaining reaction as the voice of "Lilipad," the imaginary lifeguard of an equally imaginary swimming pool behind WING.

Cartwright had learned by then that her voice - call of the different characters and the weird sounds - was her fortune. One whose voice has already made him his fortune was the legendary Daws Butler, the voice of "Yogi Bear" and "Huckleberry Hound," among hundreds of others. She called him and charmed him and they soon began exchanging letters regularly. He sent her scripts to record and then critiqued the tapes she returned.

For Cartwright, the time had come to move on to the big leagues. She looked at a map of Los Angeles and decided to go to UCLA because it seemed to be near Butler's home. She showed up at his doorstep one Sunday and soon began regular three-hour Sunday coaching sessions with him. He and his wife became like Cartwright's surrogate family.

Working on her theatre arts degree and studying with Butler left Cartwright plenty of energy to spare. She got her first job on an animated series as the voice of "Gloria" in the Hanna-Barbera series, Richie Rich. She then returned to the stage for an acclaimed run of The Transgressor and received personal accolades from every reviewer in Los Angeles, acquiring an agent and numerous other acting and voice offers as well.

While establishing herself as a voice-acting professional, Cartwright balanced that role with an on-camera career, landing guest roles on Fame, Empty Nest, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air , Cheers, Godzilla and The Twilight Zone: The Movie.

Bart Simpson first saw the light of day in 1987 when The Simpsons first appeared as a short, occasional cartoon on The Tracy Ullman Show. No one guessed then how far Bart and the Simpsons would go and Cartwright never guessed she would wind up voicing America's most beloved animated pop culture figure.

She has also voiced hundreds of characters in such favorites as Rug Rats, Kim Possible, Richie Rich, The Critic, God,The Devil and Bob, The Pink Panther, Animaniacs, Pinky and the Brain, Toonsylvania, Pound Puppies, My Little Pony, Glo-Friends, and the online cartoon Timber Wolf. 

Cartwright is a recipient of the prestigious "Drama-Logue Award" for her performance in her one-woman play, In Search of Fellini. The play has been adapted for the screen by her production company "Cartwright Entertainment" and is, along with several other projects under her SportsBlast banner, in various stages of development.

Cartwright also writes a quarterly newsletter, The Cartwright News and is the author of My Life as a Ten-Year-Old Boy, the ultimate insider's guide to The Simpsons, the longest-running animated show in history. A mix of obscure behind-the-scenes trivia and a grouping of autobiographical sketches and photos, the book traces the show's rapid rise to wild popularity.

The book also tells how the sound effects and animation are done, offers tidbits on celebrity guest stars, references anecdotes from the episodes and reveals what it is like to be at the center of an American institution, one that has changed forever the face of American television. The book is packed with more information than has ever been revealed about Bart Simpson, the most precocious, irreverent and intriguing ten-year-old ever to enter the American consciousness.

Cartwright makes her home in the Los Angeles area and is mother of two children.

• Cartwright's multimedia presentation (videos and an army of voices) takes audiences on a hilarious journey of voice-overs for film and television, as well as discussing character development. Her fascinating "Cinderella story" is motivating and inspiring.