Eric Bauza, an Emmy Award-winning voice actor who brought Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and other “Looney Tunes” cartoon characters to life, died Sunday in California. He was 46.

His death was confirmed by his family in a statement on social media, and by the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner, which said that he had died at home of hypertensive cardiovascular disease.

Over a two-decade career, Bauza amassed hundreds of voice acting credits for studios including Cartoon Network, Disney and DreamWorks. His best-known roles were those he voiced for Warner Bros.’ “Looney Tunes” cartoons, including Sylvester, Tweety, Foghorn Leghorn and Elmer Fudd.

At the inaugural Children’s and Family Emmy Awards in 2022, Bauza won for his “Looney Tunes” roles. He also won Emmy Awards in 2023 and 2025.

Eric Bauza was born Dec. 7, 1979, to Filipino immigrant parents and grew up in Scarborough, Ontario. Information on his survivors was not immediately available on Monday.

In an interview with The New York Times last year, Bauza recalled first watching “Looney Tunes” cartoons on Saturday mornings as a child and being enticed by their wacky violence and daring humor.

He had been doing funny voices to make people laugh from a young age, he recalled in a 2021 interview with Complex, a youth culture magazine, describing how many Filipino households had karaoke machines built into the television. “That’s how I got my practice, just kind of testing my material and voices on my family,” he said.

But his interest in voice acting was catalyzed, he told the Times, when a teacher in high school tasked him with delivering the morning announcements over the PA system. He did so in different cartoon voices, entertaining his classmates.

He first pursued a career as an animation artist, moving from Ontario to stay with an uncle in Los Angeles, but soon realized that he was not finding creative fulfillment. He later decided to focus full-time on pursuing voice work. He landed a role in the Nickelodeon show “El Tigre: The Adventures of Manny Rivera,” which aired in 2007 and 2008 and secured him a visa to stay in the United States.

His first voice-acting role in the “Looney Tunes” franchise was Marvin the Martian on “The Looney Tunes Show,” which aired on Cartoon Network from 2011 to 2013. On the “Looney Tunes Cartoons” series and in the 2021 film “Space Jam: A New Legacy,” Bauza voiced at least a half dozen characters in each project.

Describing his process for learning and practicing the “Looney Tunes” character voices, Bauza told the Times that he often referred back to the materials of Mel Blanc, the voice actor who conceived most of the characters’ voices nearly 90 years ago.

“Mel Blanc is like the voice of God for me,” Bauza said. “He’s the blueprint. If you’re replicating any of these classic characters, you have to refer back to him because he created not just their voices but their personalities.”

In the recent film “Coyote vs. Acme,” Bauza voices Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig and other characters. The film imagined the Looney Tunes mainstay Wile E. Coyote taking the Acme Corp. to court for its defective products that had repeatedly thwarted his pursuit of the Road Runner.

Despite his vast repertoire, Bauza told the Times in 2025 that he hoped to one day be known for a voice of his own.

“In this business the dream is to create an iconic voice that every kid in the schoolyard does,” he said.

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Yan Zhuang/Daniel Dorsa
c. 2026 The New York Times Company