Phil Roman

Philip Roman was born on December 21, 1930, in Fresno, California. His parents were Mexican migrant farm workers. He spoke only Spanish until kindergarten. After graduating from San Joaquin Memorial High School, he moved to Hollywood, California and earned a scholarship to the Hollywood Art Center School.

Roman begin his career in 1955 as an assistant animator for the Disney animated classic Sleeping Beauty. Early in his career, Roman was an animator for Chuck Jones's independent studios, Sib Tower 12 Productions and later Chuck Jones Productions. He was a lead animator for How the Grinch Stole Christmas!, and later provided an audio commentary with June Foray on the DVD release of the film. In the 1970s, Roman directed several of the Peanuts animated specials produced at Bill Melendez' studio.

In 1984, Roman founded his own animation studio, Film Roman, which produced the animation for the Garfield television specials. He directed all the twelve Garfield specials broadcast from 1982 to 1991. He also appeared in the documentary special Happy Birthday, Garfield, which went behind the scenes of both the comic strip and the animated versions of Garfield. In 1992, Roman became animation executive producer for The Simpsons, which his company started working on beginning with season four, taking over from Klasky Csupo, who animated the first three seasons. In the same year, he directed Tom and Jerry: The Movie, his studio's first theatrical feature.

In 1999, Roman sold his studio and later formed Phil Roman Entertainment. The company produced the animated special Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer. Roman has served as the production supervisor and executive producer in the Mexican-American animated film El Americano: The Movie, which was released in 2016. Following Film Roman's purchase by Waterman Entertainment in 2015, Roman returned to the company and founded as chairman emeritus until Steve Waterman terminated the company in 2018.

In 2016, Roman was honored with the Inkpot Award.