Eric Jacobson

Eric Jacobson (born January 25, 1971) is an American puppeteer, best known for performing the Muppet characters Miss Piggy, Fozzie Bear, Animal, and Sam Eagle for Disney's The Muppets Studio, as well as Sesame Street characters Bert and Grover—all roles that he inherited from the characters' original performer, Frank Oz.

Jacobson, a native of Fort Worth, initially started playing Bert in 1997, but officially joined the cast as Bert and additional Muppets in 2000. His role expanded in 2002 to include new Grover segments, particularly Global Grover. In 2001, he and David Rudman played Cookie Monster until 2002 when Sesame Workshop chose David as Cookie so there would be more interaction between Bert, Grover and Cookie Monster. However, Oz occasionally comes in to record new material with those characters.

His second role came in 2001 with The Book of Pooh, where he worked on Piglet and Kanga. That year, he also began playing Miss Piggy, debuting at the "Muppetfest" convention. Subsequently, in It's a Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie (2002), he performed the roles of Miss Piggy, Fozzie Bear and Animal. In The Muppets' Wizard of Oz (2005), as well as Sam Eagle.

Jacobson appeared as the Little Bad Wolf in the pilot episode of Jack's Big Music Show.

Guest appearances

Jacobson's Miss Piggy has appeared on Rove Live, Live with Regis and Kelly, The Tony Danza Show, Good Morning America, This Morning, WWE Raw, Take Two with Phineas and Ferb, Good Luck Charlie, WWE Tribute to the Troops. and appeared in an episode of the Disney Channel Original Series So Random!.

His Grover has appeared on Good Morning Australia, Rove Live, and Jimmy Kimmel Live!. His Fozzie has appeared on Saturday Night Live, Jimmy Kimmel Live!, The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson and @midnight. Extreme Makeover: Home Edition included Muppet guests, such as Jacobson's Miss Piggy, Fozzie Bear, and Animal. Jacobson's Bert appeared in episode 22 of Between the Lions' season 2, "Tweet! Tweet!".