What Happened To The Brady Bunch's Cousin Oliver Actor?

Robbie Rist played one of the most infamous late-addition characters in television history, Cousin Oliver on "The Brady Bunch." Introduced in the ABC sitcom's fifth season, Oliver was an attempt to boost ratings by bringing a new cute kid into the mix since the original child actors were growing up. It didn't save the show, which was canceled after that season. Rist's career didn't end, however, and he went on to become a prolific voice actor, even voicing a Ninja Turtle.

Rist was just nine years old when he played Oliver on "The Brady Bunch" in 1974. Despite being remembered as one of TV's biggest "jump the shark" moments, Oliver appeared in only six episodes. Rist landed another regular acting gig that same year when he starred in the NBC drama "Lucas Tanner," and he continued appearing on TV throughout the decade in shows like "The Bionic Woman," "Big John, Little John," and "The Mary Tyler Moore Show."

In the '80s, he had one-off live-action roles in shows like "Knight Rider" and "The Love Boat," but it was the 1984 Saturday morning cartoon "Kidd Video" that marked the next stage of his career. Rist voiced a teenager who was transported to an animated, music video-esque world. In the '90s, audiences could hear Rist all over the place.

One of Robbie Rist's best-known roles after Cousin Oliver is Michelangelo, the nunchuck-wielding party dude of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Rist first voiced Michelangelo in the live-action 1990 movie and returned for "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze" the following year, as well as the third film in '93. He told a "TMNT" fan site that the voice came naturally to him because he grew up in the Valley and he and his childhood friends all talked like stoner surfers. "When the opportunity to do Michelangelo came up I knew him already," Rist explained. "I had went to high school with him."

Rist's extensive voice acting credits include roles in shows like "Batman: The Animated Series," the forgotten sci-fi series "Invasion America," "Totally Spies!," "Lilo & Stitch: The Series," "Jackie Chan Adventures," and the "Powerpuff Girls" reboot. He also voiced Chōji Akimichi, a large and loyal supporting character, in the English dub of the "Naruto" anime and numerous video game adaptations. His big-screen voice credits also include a part in "Balto."

"VO acting is like on-camera acting, only harder," Rist told No Echo, but he still occasionally appears in the flesh, including in a silly role in the so-bad-it's-good TV movie "Sharknado." Rist is also a working musician and producer, and his discography includes several songs he wrote for the "Sharknado" movies.