3 min read
April Terri Winchell (born January 4, 1960, in Whitestone, Queens, New York)1 is an American voice actress, writer, comedian, and radio personality. The daughter of legendary ventriloquist and inventor Paul Winchell, she has built a career spanning animation, live theater, radio, advertising, and the internet, and is best known to Disney audiences as the voice of Clarabelle Cow since 1996.1 In animation she contributed a guest voice performance to Extreme Ghostbusters.
Join the community
Free accounts post in the forum, upload to the gallery, edit the wiki, and follow your favorite franchises. No credit card. No catch.
Winchell was born to inventor and ventriloquist Paul Winchell and actress-writer Nina Russell (née Ventimiglia).1 Growing up the daughter of one of television's most recognizable ventriloquist performers gave her an early immersion in performance and comedy. The family raised her in the greater Los Angeles area, primarily in Woodland Hills, California.1
She attended Sequoia Junior High School and later enrolled at North Central Michigan College and Orange Coast College, where she appeared in a 1977 summer production of Mack and Mabel.1
Her first professional voice work came at age 12, when she voiced Connie on the ABC animated series Kid Power (1972-1973).1
Winchell has worked as a voice actress across hundreds of animated television series and films over more than four decades. Her best-known ongoing role is Clarabelle Cow, a position she has held within the Disney franchise since 1996, voicing the character in Mickey Mouse Works, Disney's House of Mouse, Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, and related productions.1 She is also the current voice of the Queen of Hearts in Disney animation.1
Her most prominent series roles include:
In feature animation, she voiced Mrs. Herman in Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), and has appeared in Antz, Monsters University, and Rob Zombie's The Haunted World of El Superbeasto.2 She has also served as a casting director and dialogue director on Disney animated productions, and contributed punch writing to Recess: School's Out (2001).1
Winchell transitioned into television writing after a series of radio commercials she wrote and directed for Glendale Federal Bank drew the attention of Roseanne Barr. Barr hired her as a writer on Roseanne, for which Winchell wrote three episodes.1 The credit opened further writing work in animation and television.
Winchell co-founded Radio Savant Productions in 1992, a production company that created radio commercial campaigns that won Cannes, Clio, and Mercury Award recognition.1 She hosted a weekend talk show on KFI in Los Angeles from 1999 to 2002.1
On stage, Winchell played Ado Annie in a production of Oklahoma! and performed opposite Kevin Spacey in Gypsy.1
From 2009 to 2013, Winchell ran the satirical blog Regretsy under the pseudonym "Helen Killer."1 The site mocked unusual and poorly executed craft listings on the handmade marketplace Etsy. It attracted approximately 90 million page views within its first four days and, over its lifespan, raised more than $200,000 for charitable causes.1
Winchell contributed a guest voice performance to Extreme Ghostbusters, appearing in the 1997 episode The Jersey Devil Made Me Do It.3
Winchell was married to Mick Kuisel from 1996 to 2013, with whom she co-founded Radio Savant Productions.1 She subsequently married John Foley in 2013.1
Some content on this page was researched using the Ghostbusters Wiki on Fandom.
"April Winchell," IMDb, accessed 2026-06-13, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0934589/. ↩ ↩2
"Extreme Ghostbusters: The Jersey Devil (TV Episode 1997)," IMDb, accessed 2026-06-13, https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0574543/. Winchell voiced a Waitress in this episode. ↩
