John Lasseter is one of my idols.
He’s a native southern Californian who grew up in Whittier and dreamed of becoming an animator is whole life, and went on to become the Senior Creative Officer at both Pixar and Disney, not to mention the directing three of my most favorite movies ever, A Bug’s Life and the first two Toy Story movies. He’s everything I wanted to be when I was growing up.
Oh, and the dude has 374 aloha shirts in current rotation:
I repeat: everything I want to be when I grow up.
George Takei is another hero.
He gets lots of geek cred for being Hikaru Sulu in the original Star Trek, of course, but he’s also lent his fantastic voice to cartoons like Samurai Jack, Avatar: The Last Airbender, El Tigre, Kim Possible, and Clone Wars, among others. He’s also funny as hell, and his Twitter feed has more good one-liners than a night at the Improv:
Beyond that, he’s an active and effective advocate for the LGBT community, added by his celebrity and humor (and, of course, that fantastic voice again):
Just okay? Nay! Hurray to be Takei!