Manny Ice Age: The Woolly Mammoth, His Voice Actor and His Story

Manny is a woolly mammoth, the grumpy loner who becomes the anchor of the herd. He is credited as Manfred 'Manny' in Ice Age (2002), directed by Chris Wedge, and simply as Manny in every later film. Ray Romano voices him in Ice Age (2002), Ice Age: The Meltdown, Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, Ice Age: Continental Drift and Ice Age: Collision Course, and he is billed first in each of them. In The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild (2022), directed by John Donkin, the part goes to Sean Kenin.

When we first meet him, the other animals are heading south to escape a coming ice age and Manny is going the other way. He wants to be left alone, which is exactly why Sid, a clumsy and talkative ground sloth, ends up trailing him. Manny grudgingly saves Sid from an attack, and that reluctant favor sets off the whole saga.

His backstory is one of loss: he has lost his own family, and Ice Age: The Meltdown returns to it, with Manny quietly fearing he may be the last mammoth alive. It explains why he keeps people at a distance.

Manny is short for Manfred, the full name in the Ice Age (2002) credits. For where he sits among the others, see the full list of ice age characters, and for the order the films arrived in, see ice age movies in order.

Manny's arc runs from lonely survivor to protective father, and each film moves him one step along that road. In Ice Age (2002), he and Sid try to return a human baby to his people. Diego, a sabertooth sent by the pack leader Soto to steal the child, offers to guide them while secretly plotting an ambush at Half Peak. Manny saves Diego from a lava flow, Diego later takes serious wounds fighting Soto to save Manny, and the baby's father thanks Manny with a shell and bead necklace.

In Ice Age: The Meltdown (2006), directed by Carlos Saldanha, a vulture warns that the ice wall around the valley is a dam. The animals have about three days to reach a boat at the far end. Manny meets Ellie, a mammoth raised by possums who thinks she is one, and he hesitates to get close because of the family he lost. When the dam bursts, he rescues her, and a herd of other mammoths appears through the crack Scrat made, proving he is not the last. He chooses to stay with Ellie.

In Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (2009), also directed by Saldanha, Manny and Ellie are expecting a baby and he fusses over every danger near their home. When a Tyrannosaur mother drags Sid into a lost jungle beneath the ice, Manny leads the rescue. Ellie gives birth to Peaches during the adventure.

Ice Age: Continental Drift (2012), directed by Michael Thurmeier and Steve Martino, tests him as a father of a teenager. Peaches wants to fit in with cooler young mammoths, and Manny struggles to let her grow up. A continental upheaval carries him out to sea on a slab of ice with Sid, Diego and Granny, and he vows to get back to his family. He defeats the pirate Captain Gutt in the final fight.

Ice Age: Collision Course (2016), directed by Thurmeier, finds him dealing with Peaches' engagement to Julian while asteroids fall. Julian helps Manny push in the final crystal that sends the main asteroid off course. In The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild (2022), Manny is part of the older herd that doubts Crash and Eddie can look after themselves.

Manny's closest bonds are with his mate Ellie, his daughter Peaches and the two friends who started out as strangers, Sid and Diego. The herd is the family he rebuilt after losing his first one.

Ellie. Introduced in The Meltdown, ellie ice age was an orphaned calf adopted by a possum mother, and her brothers Crash and Eddie come along with her. Manny and Ellie grow close, he holds back, and then he chooses to stay. They are expecting a baby in Dawn of the Dinosaurs.

Peaches. Peaches ice age is born in Dawn of the Dinosaurs. She is a teenager in Continental Drift, where she makes up with her loyal friend Louis, and she marries Julian at the end of Collision Course.

Sid. Sid ice age is the sloth Manny saves in the first scenes of Ice Age (2002). Sid follows Manny as he walks against the southward migration, and the pair keep rescuing each other for the rest of the saga.

Diego. Diego ice age begins as the sabertooth sent to betray Manny and ends as one of his closest friends, after both save each other in the first film. By Continental Drift, Diego has his own romance with shira ice age.

Crash and Eddie. As Ellie's possum brothers, crash and eddie ice age join the herd in The Meltdown. In Buck Wild they cause the avalanche that wrecks the herd's summer home, leave the herd to prove themselves, and team up with Zee and a Tyrannosaurus called Momma. Manny also meets buck ice age in Dawn of the Dinosaurs, and Buck stays behind in the lost world. Scrat's acorn chases set off the disasters in several films, so scrat ice age is the herd's accidental troublemaker.

Manny survives every film and finishes the saga alive, settled with his family and still part of the herd. His story has no death and no departure, only a series of reunions.

In Ice Age (2002), he and Sid return the baby, and Diego, though wounded, recovers and the trio head south together. In The Meltdown, the other mammoths who emerge prove Manny is not the last of his kind, and he stays with Ellie. Dawn of the Dinosaurs ends with the herd back on the surface and Manny welcoming Peaches, while Buck chooses to stay below. In Continental Drift, Manny beats Captain Gutt, the family is reunited and the herd settles on a green island. In Collision Course, the eruption pushes the asteroid away and the film closes at Peaches' wedding. In Buck Wild, he and the rest of the herd promise to visit Crash and Eddie, who decide to live in the Lost World.

The next film, ice age boiling point, has a US release date of February 5, 2027, according to TheWrap and Box Office Mojo, and is in production. Manny's role in it has not been confirmed.

In my opinion, Manny works best when the films let his grumpiness crack and show the grief underneath, and these are the scenes where that happens most clearly.

The ice cave in Ice Age (2002) is the strongest, because the human paintings make him relive the loss of his family and the film slows down to let a cartoon mammoth be properly sad. It could be argued that everything good about the character comes from that one quiet scene, since it explains why he is so prickly and why saving Sid and the baby matters.

The Meltdown's reveal of the other mammoths is the payoff for his fear of being the last one, and his choice to stay with Ellie turns a joke about loneliness into a love story. Dawn of the Dinosaurs plays the expectant father for laughs, but it also makes the rescue in the lost jungle feel personal. Continental Drift adds a harder test, because Manny has to accept that Peaches is growing up while he drifts away on a block of ice. His final fight with Gutt, a pirate ape, is a real set piece, though the emotional high point is getting back to his family. In Collision Course, pushing the final crystal into the volcano alongside Julian, who is about to marry his daughter, is a small but telling beat.

If you are choosing where to start with Manny, begin with Ice Age (2002) and the full ice age 2002 guide, then follow with ice age the meltdown. For the complete run, see ice age movies.