Steve Whitmire is an American puppeteer who joined the MuppetA Muppet is a puppet built in the soft foam-and-fleece style... company in 1978 and performed Kermit the Frog from 1990 to 2016.
He started at the bottom
Whitmire came in at nineteen performing background characters on The Muppet Show, and worked up to principal roles — Rizzo the Rat, Lips in the Electric Mayhem, Bean Bunny, and Wembley Fraggle on Fraggle Rock.
Rizzo is the technical highlight
A rat is a small puppet performed low and fast, and much of Rizzo’s work involved rod and cable mechanisms that let a full-size performer operate a hand-sized character with real dexterity. It is a very different problem from a standard hand-and-rod build.
Taking over Kermit
Following Jim Henson’s death in 1990, Whitmire assumed the character and performed it for twenty-six years across films, series and specials. Inheriting a role that closely identified with its originator is a specific and difficult kind of puppetry — the audience knows exactly what the character sounds like and how it moves.
His departure in 2017 was disputed
Whitmire and the Muppets Studio publicly disagreed about the reasons for it, and Matt Vogel took over the role. It is part of the record and worth stating plainly, though the working history above is what a builder or performer would actually learn from.
He also performed Waldo C. Graphic
in The Jim HensonJim Henson (1936–1990) was the puppeteer and filmmaker who... More Hour — an early experiment in real-time computer-generated puppetry, performed live with a control device rather than a hand, and a genuine milestone in digital puppet performance.