Even if you're the least pop culture–aware person in the world, you know who Nancy Cartwright is. You just might not know why you know.

In the late '80s, Cartwright, a voice actor, went on an audition for the role of an 8-year-old girl in a series of brief animated shorts that would air in the middle of Fox's sketch comedy The Tracey Ullman Show. She didn't particularly want that part, but she sparked to something in the girl's older brother, a rascal named Bart Simpson. The Simpson family would be spun off into its own show, Cartwright would turn Bart into a world-famous icon, and she's still playing the kid 30 years later.

But Cartwright is more than her most famous part, even on The Simpsons (where she voices a host of the show's other well-known characters). She was the second Chuckie on Rugrats. She was on a bevy of '80s cartoons, including Pound Puppies. And she's had several memorable on-camera roles, even if you wouldn't instantly recognize her in any of them. Now she's both nominated for an Emmy (for the first time!) for her work as Bart and about to premiere her screenwriting debut, the film In Search of Fellini, based on her one-woman show. Cartwright joins Todd to talk being Bart, the technical process of creating a character using only your voice, and why she loves the filmmaker Federico Fellini.