Early career was Cartwright's mentor and helped her become a voice actress. Cartwright continued training as a voice actress with Butler. She recalled, "every Sunday I'd take a 20-minute bus ride to his house in
Beverly Hills for a one-hour lesson and be there for four hours ... They had four sons, they didn't have a daughter and I kind of fitted in as the baby of the family." Butler introduced her to many of the voice actors and directors at
Hanna-Barbera. After she met the director
Gordon Hunt, he asked her to audition for a recurring role as Gloria in
Richie Rich. She received the part, and later worked with Hunt on several other projects. At the end of 1980, Cartwright signed with a talent agency and landed a lead role in a pilot for a
sitcom called
In Trouble. Cartwright described the show as "forgettable, but it jump-started my on-camera career". She graduated from UCLA in 1981 with a degree in theater. During the summer, Cartwright worked with
Jonathan Winters as part of an improvisation troupe at
Kenyon College in
Gambier, Ohio. Cartwright replied by sending Maslin a letter insisting she was not cross-eyed, and included a photograph. Later, Cartwright auditioned for the role of Ethel, a girl who becomes trapped in a cartoon world in the third segment of
Twilight Zone: The Movie. She met with director
Joe Dante and later described him as "a total cartoon buff, and once he took a look at my resume and noticed Daws Butler's name on it, we were off and running, sharing anecdotes about Daws and animation. After about twenty minutes, he said, 'considering your background, I don't see how I could cast anyone
but you in this part! The segment was based on
The Twilight Zone television series episode "
It's a Good Life", which was later parodied in
The Simpsons episode "
Treehouse of Horror II" (1991). Cartwright continued to do voice work for projects including
Pound Puppies,
Popeye and Son,
Snorks,
My Little Pony and
Saturday Supercade. She joined a "
loop group", and recorded vocals for characters in the background of films, although in most cases the sound was turned down so that very little of her voice was heard. She did minor voice-over work for several films, including
The Clan of the Cave Bear (1986),
Silverado (1985),
Sixteen Candles (1984),
Back to the Future Part II, and
The Color Purple (1985). Cartwright also voiced a shoe that was "dipped" in acid in
Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), describing it as her first "off-screen death scene", The play was co-written by Peter Kjenaas, and Cartwright won a
Drama-Logue Award after performing it in Los Angeles in 1995. In a 1998 interview, she stated her intention to make it into a feature film, which she
succeeded in doing in 2017. Creator
Matt Groening let her try out for Bart and gave her the job on the spot. Bart's voice came naturally to Cartwright, as she had previously used elements of it in
My Little Pony,
Snorks, and
Pound Puppies. In 1989, the shorts were spun off into a half-hour show on the
Fox network called
The Simpsons. Bart quickly became the show's
breakout personality and one of the most celebrated characters on television—his popularity in 1990 and 1991 was known as "Bartmania". Bart was described as "television's brightest new star" by Mike Boone of
The Gazette and was named 1990's "entertainer of the year" by
Entertainment Weekly. Despite Bart's fame, however, Cartwright remained relatively unknown. During the first season of
The Simpsons, Fox ordered Cartwright not to give interviews, because they did not want to publicize the fact that Bart was voiced by a woman. Cartwright's normal speaking voice is said to have "no obvious traces of Bart", and she believes her role is "the best acting job in the world" Cartwright voices several other characters on the show, including
Nelson Muntz,
Ralph Wiggum,
Todd Flanders,
Kearney, and
Database. She first voiced Nelson in the episode "
Bart the General" (
season one, 1990). The character was to be voiced by
Dana Hill, but Hill missed the recording session and Cartwright was given the role. She developed Nelson's voice on the spot and describes him as "a throat-ripper". Ralph Wiggum had originally been voiced by
Jo Ann Harris, but Cartwright was assigned to voice the character in "
Bart the Murderer" (
season three, 1991). Todd Flanders, the only voice for which Cartwright used another source, is based on Sherman (voiced by
Walter Tetley), the boy from ''
Peabody's Improbable History, a series of shorts aired on The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show. and an Annie Award in 1995 for Best Voice Acting in the Field of Animation. Bart was named one of the 100 most important people of the 20th century by Time'', and in 2000, Bart and the rest of the Simpson family were awarded a star on the
Hollywood Walk of Fame, located at 7021 Hollywood Boulevard. Until 1998, Cartwright was paid $30,000 per episode. During a pay dispute in 1998, Fox threatened to replace the six main voice actors and made preparations for casting new actors. A compromise was reached after a month, and Cartwright's pay rose to $250,000 per episode. Salaries were re-negotiated in 2008 with the voice actors receiving approximately $400,000 per episode. Three years later, with Fox threatening to cancel the series unless production costs were cut, Cartwright and the other cast members accepted a 25 percent pay cut, down to just over $300,000 per episode.
Further career In addition to her work on
The Simpsons, Cartwright has voiced many other characters on several animated series, including Chuckie Finster in
Rugrats and
All Grown Up!, Margo Sherman in
The Critic,
Mindy in
Animaniacs, and
Rufus the
naked mole-rat in
Kim Possible. For the role of Rufus, Cartwright researched mole-rats extensively, and became "a font of useless trivia". She was nominated for a
Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Performer in an Animated Program in 2004 for her work on the show. Laura A. Bischoff of the
Dayton Daily News commented that the book was the "ultimate insider's guide to
The Simpsons". Critics complained that the book lacked interesting stories and was aimed mostly at fans of
The Simpsons rather than a general audience. Cartwright adapted
My Life as a 10-Year-Old Boy into a
one-woman play in 2004. Cartwright has performed it at a variety of venues, including the August 2004
Edinburgh Festival Fringe in Scotland. The play received modest reviews, including criticism for a lack of inside stories about
The Simpsons, and its "overweeningly upbeat" tone. David Chatterton of
The British Theatre Guide described the show as "interesting and entertaining, but not really a 'must see' even for Simpsons fans". Cartwright has shown an interest in
stock car racing and as of 2007 was seeking a
NASCAR license. In 2001, she founded a production company called SportsBlast and created an online animated series called
The Kellys. The series is focused on racing; Cartwright voices a seven-year-old named Chip Kelly. In 2016, Cartwright launched Spotted Cow Entertainment, her own film and television production company, with Peter Kjenaas, Monica Gil and Kevin Burke. With a focus on international audiences, Spotted Cow is seeking "to finance, produce and acquire live action and animated films, television series, as well as entertainment for digital platforms with budgets up to $15M." With Spotted Cow, Cartwright made her first film as a screenwriter and producer,
In Search of Fellini, which was released on September 15, 2017. Based on her own journey to
Italy in 1985 in a bid to meet the famed director
Federico Fellini, the film fulfilled Cartwright's longtime vision of turning her 1995 one-woman play
In Search of Fellini into a film. ==Personal life==