Interview with E.G. Daily
Thursday / October 1, 2026
About E.G. Daily
Actress, singer and voice actor known as Tommy Pickles in Rugrats, Buttercup in The Powerpuff Girls and Babe in Babe: Pig in the City, and for singing the Two and a Half Men theme.
These answers are taken from E.G. Daily Returns | Full Episode | Toon'd In! with Jim Cummings on Toon'd In with Jim Cummings's YouTube channel. You! Backstage did not conduct this interview.
What do you enjoy most about voice over?
I like all of it, because all of it is so fun for me. Doing voices is so fun. You get to do any kind of character: boy, girl, little kid.
If you can't have connections to anyone or anything, there's no energy. Whereas you get together with a bunch of people, there's crazy energy. You're getting reflected back on to you. People are seeing you again. It goes back to you being seen, you being heard. You're not just working in a bubble.
I love making voices. I really love it. It's really fun. However, I'm a singer. I'm not just a voice actor. I am a total, whole entertainer. I should have been born in the olden days, when they did movie musicals and you were part of the studio, because you sang and you danced in all those old movies.
What was a great moment for you as a voice actor?
I knew Chuck Lorre through my friend, and I would invite him to my live shows. I'd say, "Tell Chuck E.G. is playing at this little bar," just me on guitar, or me and a guy on guitar. Often Chuck Lorre would be sitting right in front of me. So he knew my singing. One day his people called and said, "Chuck wants you to audition for the theme song for Two and a Half Men." He can't give it to her, because they need to pick the right voice, but he wants her to be in the mix. So I said, "No worries. You don't have to give it to me. Just give me a reference of the kid that you want me to sound like, Jake from the show." And it literally took me 15 minutes to do it. "Men, men, men, manly men." They paid me like 400 bucks to do the demo, and then they called back and said, "Oh, they love you." They had auditioned kids on Broadway from Les Miz, little boy singers from famous choirs. They were trying to get a real boy singer to sing the theme song. And of course they gave it to me. That theme song has been running so long in syndication. That show did help me a lot, especially when things are really slow.
How did your voice over career unfold?
I ended up getting the reputation for being the voice for all these movies, like Lorenzo's Oil with Nick Nolte and Susan Sarandon. It's a true story about a small boy who was sick. George Miller, who did all the Mad Max movies, directed it. He cast me in Lorenzo's Oil first, where I had to do a real boy's voice. I had to re-dub him. Then he cast me in Babe 2, and then he cast me in Happy Feet as Baby Mumble. So I sort of got this reputation for being the woman who does all the re-dubs of all the real kids for all the big movies. So it was kind of cool. I did Froggy in The Little Rascals too.
Rugrats bought me a house, and Powerpuff Girls.
What advice do you have for new voice actors?
If you're not getting a lot of opportunities, it's because you're not saying yes to the things that really matter to you. And once you do, everything starts coming to you. You can't even stop it.
I have to listen to myself first of all, and I have to get out of the rooms of people that aren't listening to me. I have to get away from the people that aren't hearing and seeing me, because they're dangerous for me. I have to go in the rooms where people see me, and that's where you light back up again, by being reflected, and people are like, "Oh my god, I love you. I love who you are. I love hearing you."
Honestly, most of my jobs are from my friends.
Has your voice over career progressed the way you expected?
We all went through it. Work was slowing down, money was slowing down. Everybody thinks it's all perfect, and then you have these moments where things are hard. You're getting old, your kids are grown up, they don't need you, you're not working as much, you're not booking the jobs you think you're doing a great job on.
Somebody asked me to do an appearance in Cancun for this '80s thing, signing autographs with John Cusack and a couple of other actresses from Better Off Dead. I was having so much anxiety, I didn't think I was well enough to go. And then something inside me said, you better say yes to this. Then they asked me, would you sing that Better Off Dead song at the afternoon party? All these '80s bands were there, Mark Slaughter and all these bands, and I was like, these are my people. There's a picture of me with this giant audience of people in a pool, and I looked at that picture and I was like, oh my god, that's who I am. I forgot who I was. The minute I left Cancun, I said, I will never stop singing again. Right after that, some guys asked me to write some songs, and then to be in their video, and then to be in their band. Everything fell into place because I said yes to something that mattered to me.
How do you take direction and keep communication clear in a remote session?
You're sending in self-tapes, probably hundreds, and you're wondering why you don't hear back from anyone. There was a period where every audition I was hating, because you send it into the email abyss and then you never hear back from anything or anyone. And then you think you are no longer valid, and you start to fall into a thing again. And I realized, oh no, I am super valid. I'm in the rooms where people aren't seeing me anymore.
The agents, too, started working from home. The vibe of the office is gone. There's no more mojo of the town. None of us like it. You're not getting any validation, you don't get anyone reflecting back to you. So it's not easy to do what we do, especially now, the way we're having to do it.
Of all the voices and characters you have recorded, which is your favorite?
Tommy Pickles was awfully sweet. He's an awfully sweet character, so I really like doing him. But then there's Buttercup, and then I did a character in some show, I don't even remember what the show's called, but her name was Germ Girl. She would kiss people and then give them a cold. I just really liked that character. She was fun. And one of my favorites was Froggy.
Tell me about a read or a character that was hard to get right. What was the job and why was it challenging?
Froggy kills me. I can't even do it right this second, because the session I did yesterday was so much screaming.
I did a play called Tanzi, where I had to be a female wrestler. It was a musical, and it was so intense. It was so taxing on my voice that I would wake up in the middle of the night and be like, "Hello," and I'd be like, oh no. And then the next day I would get up on the stage and my voice would come right back. I've never really lost it to where I couldn't do it. Warm teas are nice, and getting enough sleep and rest. I like to do little warm-ups, but I didn't do any for this session, because I didn't realize I was going to scream so much. Luckily I'm a rock singer, so my voice can handle it.
Tell me something I may not know from reading your demo list.
It becomes a very funny problem when you go to a con. They make these banners for you at the cons, and I'm looking at it and I'm like, "I think you made a mistake. There's a character there I didn't do." And then people come to the table like, "Will you do the voice of Finn again," or whatever it is from some show. And I'm like, "I didn't do that voice." And then it turns out I did do it. I've just done a lot of characters. You do the voice, you do like three episodes, and you don't know that it becomes famous, because you don't even see the animation most of the time. Then supposedly they blow up, and the fans know the voice. So that happens all the time, and that's a fun part of the job.
My mother owned this famous punk club called the Anti-Club. It was the biggest underground punk club in LA.
What are some of your professional goals for the future?
We're about 80% done working on the documentary based on Listen Closely. We're using some of the footage from Listen Closely, and we're intercutting it with real footage of the time periods when things were happening. I've compiled footage of actual news things that were real. There's a lot of footage with Romy, because she was my tour manager, and I did a lot of singing shows. There's a lot of footage from when I was doing live shows. I always filmed everything back then. It's all going into the documentary, which will be like a Netflix two-parter or something.
The other part of my career was, I knew I should be doing more on camera, but the rep part is hard, and finding the right people to actually back [you]. Rob Zombie movies, those are fun. I'm waiting for him to cast me again.
E.G. Daily's Full Biography
Elizabeth EG Daily is an American actress, singer, and one of the top talents in the world of voiceover. You might know her in the classics as Dottie from "Peewee's Big Adventure" to "Valley Girl," or the classic "Smelly Cat" episode of Friends. Maybe Candy from The Devil's Rejects.
EG is said to be the voice of your childhood as Tommy Pickles from "Rugrats" or Buttercup from the "Powerpuff Girls," Babe from Babe: Pig in the City, Young Mumble from the Academy Award winning Happy Feet.
She also provided her voice as a singer, many classic projects, such as the theme song from Two and Half Men. Singing in Grand Theft Auto, and many classic soundtracks; Scarface, The Breakfast Club, Thief of Hearts. With lots of new current music on all digital platforms.
Elizabeth EG Daily continues to work on multiple different projects, creating more iconic acting roles, singing, VO, and producing.