Mike Judge

Mike Judge is an animator, writer, actor, and director whose work includes *Beavis and Butt-Head*, *King of the Hill*, *Office Space*, and *Silicon Valley*. Born in Guayaquil, Ecuador, in 1962, he grew up in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He studied physics at the University of California, San Diego, and worked as an engineer before turning to animation.

Judge created Beavis and Butt-Head for his short *Frog Baseball*, which appeared on MTV’s *Liquid Television* in 1992. MTV gave the two characters their own series in 1993. Judge voiced both teenagers, whose commentary on music videos became a defining part of the show. He also directed the 1996 feature film *Beavis and Butt-Head Do America*. After the original series ended in 1997, he brought the characters back for a 2011 season and another revival beginning in 2022. The latter followed the film *Beavis and Butt-Head Do the Universe*.

With Greg Daniels, Judge created *King of the Hill*, which premiered on Fox in 1997. Set in the fictional town of Arlen, Texas, the series centers on propane salesman Hank Hill and his family. Judge voiced Hank and his neighbor Boomhauer. Unlike the deliberately crude antics of Beavis and Butt-Head, the show drew much of its humor from Hank’s earnestness and the everyday disputes around him. Its original run lasted 13 seasons, ending in 2010.

Judge wrote and directed the 1999 film *Office Space*, adapting characters and ideas from his earlier animated *Milton* shorts. Its story follows Peter Gibbons, played by Ron Livingston, as he becomes increasingly indifferent to his job at the software company Initech. Stephen Root plays Milton Waddams, whose attachment to his red stapler became one of the film’s best-known details. Judge’s next major film as writer-director, *Idiocracy* (2006), sends an ordinary soldier played by Luke Wilson into a future where he finds himself unusually intelligent.

In 2014, Judge co-created HBO’s *Silicon Valley* with John Altschuler and Dave Krinsky. The comedy follows programmer Richard Hendricks and his startup, Pied Piper, through venture funding, technical setbacks, and rivalries in the technology industry. Judge’s own engineering experience preceded the series, which ran for six seasons through 2019. He later created *Mike Judge Presents: Tales from the Tour Bus*, an animated documentary series that devoted its first season to country musicians and its second to funk artists. Across these projects, Judge has repeatedly built stories around particular workplaces, communities, and subcultures, from an Albuquerque-area teenager’s imagined mischief to office cubicles and startup incubators.