Ben Schwartz

Benjamin Joseph Schwartz (born September 15, 1981) is an American actor and comedian. He has guest starred as Jean-Ralphio Saperstein on the NBC sitcom Parks and Recreation and Clyde Oberholt on the Showtime series House of Lies; voiced Randy Cunningham in Randy Cunningham: 9th Grade Ninja, Dewey Duck in DuckTales, and Leonardo in Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles; and appeared many times in the CollegeHumor web series Jake and Amir. Schwartz voices the titular character in Sonic the Hedgehog (2020) and Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (2022). His film career also includes roles in Peep World; Everybody's Fine; The Other Guys; The Walk; This Is Where I Leave You; Standing Up, Falling Down; and Flora & Ulysses. On television, he has starred in the Netflix comedy series Space Force (2020–2022) and the Apple TV+ murder mystery comedy series The Afterparty (2022–2023). He also voiced in the Netflix interactive special We Lost Our Human as Pud. Early life Benjamin Joseph Schwartz was born on September 15, 1981 in The Bronx, New York City, to a Jewish family. His parents, both Bronx natives, raised Schwartz in Riverdale, a neighborhood in the Northwestern part of the Bronx. His father was a social worker before going into real estate and his mother was a music teacher at P.S. 24, an elementary school in Riverdale. He also has a sister named Marni. In an interview with Kevin Pollak, he stated, "When I told people I was from the Bronx, it was like 'Oh, do you have bullet wounds?' And I'm like 'No, it's just me and, like, Jewish people.'" When he was eleven years old, his family moved to Edgemont, New York, in adjacent Westchester County. Schwartz attended Edgemont Junior–Senior High School where he played basketball and sang in the chorus; he graduated in 1999. He then attended Union College, graduating in 2003 with a double major in psychology and anthropology.