Celebrity Voice Actor

For some reason, celebrities do a lot of voice-acting in big-budget animated movies. Maybe the producers figure more people will see movies with "big-name stars" in them. Maybe John Q. Public just loves his celebrities. Regardless, regular voice actors often get cast aside in favor of someone more famous when a big, important animated movie is made for public consumption.

Sometimes this results in the more Genre Savvy of viewers not only becoming aware of just who's voicing the characters, but mentally referring to the characters by the actors' names—especially if it's been a while since they've last seen the movie.

As it turns out, voice actors are not exactly pleased that their jobs are being poached by actors from other disciplines (Especially Billy West). Which makes sense, as it implies that the performing skills are interchangeable.

It's important to note that some celebrities are very talented at voice acting and would likely be among the most prolific at the profession if they did it exclusively. And there is a solid selection of performers who have managed strong careers in both fields and would not qualify for this trope, although becoming equally famous in both would be pretty rare.

Often turn out to be examples of Ink Suit Actors. See also Pop Star Composer for the musical equivalent.

Examples of Celebrity Voice Actor include:

• Nathan Fillion, Adam Baldwin, and Alan Tudyk come together once more in Halo 3: ODST. Yes, Bungie Studios is mostly staffed by Browncoats.
• Codified by Robin Williams' role as the Genie in Aladdin. Also an instance of Ink Suit Actor.
• Dreamworks Animation is notorious for this trope. Name one movie of theirs that doesn't have celebrities voicing the characters. They also market these actors very heavily; if they get a particularly big name, he or she will be Billed Above the Title.
  • CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg justifies the practice of hiring celebrities for voice over roles by explaining that most on-camera actors give more "human" performances to characters, while regular voice actors try to come up with too goofy of voices, which is not what he wants.
    • Which is a pretty big slap in the face to professional voice actors.
• Pixar doesn't do this as blatantly as Dreamworks, but they're still very guilty of this trope. All of their films have a cast of familiar faces much better known for on-camera work, assuming they've done any animation at all (beyond appearances on The Simpsons). Their only lead actor to date with extensive voice acting experience is Edward Asner, and even he is no stranger to live action. (WALL-E is an exception to this trend, for obvious reasons.) To their credit, at least after the original Toy Story ("Starring Tom Hanks and |Tim Allen!") they haven't been shouting this tendency from the rooftops, unlike Dreamworks.
• Disney also does this outside of the Disney Animated Canon, as evidenced with their American dubs of Hayao Miyazaki's films and the Kingdom Hearts series (though the latter also employs many regular voice actors as well, considering that there's Loads and Loads of Characters).
  • Speaking of Disney, Atlantis the Lost Empire had Michael J. Fox as Milo Thatch, Leonard Nimoy as the king of Atlantis, James Garner as Rourke, and Jim Varney.
  • And because Kingdom Hearts set the precedent, the English dub of anything that features Cloud Strife will have this by default.
    • Speaking of Final Fantasy and celebrities, Takeshi Kaga as Golbez in the Japanese releases of the Nintendo DS remake of Final Fantasy IV and Dissidia Final Fantasy.
• Sheena Easton voiced the Groomer on Road Rovers, as well as Sasha from All Dogs Go to Heaven 2.
  • The entire cast of All Dogs Go To Heaven: The Series was made of stars.
  • Sheena Easton also voiced Annah from Planescape: Torment.
• In a rare TV example, Ringo Starr was the narrator of the original animated Thomas the Tank Engine. The American version included George Carlin and Alec Baldwin. The current narrator? Pierce Brosnan.
• The Emperor Uriel Septim VII in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is voiced by Patrick Stewart... and also doubles as Dead Star Walking.
  • And Martin is voiced by Sean Bean.
  • Patrick Stewart also provided the voice for Professor Xavier in both of the X-Men Legends games and he wasn't the only notable name providing voice work.
    • Considering Stewart played the role in the X-Men movies made BEFORE the games, this can hardly count? It makes perfect sense to bring in the same guy as a newer audience associates with the role.
  • Back to Oblivion. The Dragon Mankar Camoran is voiced by Terence Stamp.
  • Skyrim has quite the list of these. See the Trivia page for the full list. Notably, Esbern (the narrator of the trailer) is voiced by Max Von Sydow. Unfortunately some of Esbern's lines were voiced by another actor who tried and failed to imitate von Sydow.
• The Critic and Duckman both were star-vehicle toons, for Jon Lovitz and Jason Alexander respectively.
• Speaking about doing the voice of Optimus Prime in the live-action Transformers movies, Peter Cullen remarked that it was great to be working with "the old crew" again (a couple of the voices for the live-action movie were done by the G1 voice actors), but pointedly made the comment that he "wished he could have worked with Frank Welker again." A subtle Take That over the fact that Megatron was voiced by Hugo Weaving for the live-action movies, given that Frank Welker voiced Soundwave, Ravage, and Devastator in Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (whom Optimus never meets, for different reasons.^[1]). Nevertheless, Cullen got his wish granted.
  • • Dark of the Moon adds another example: Leonard Nimoy as Sentinel Prime.
  • Long before that, Transformers: The Movie. Hoo boy. The movie practically advertised itself by actors alone: Judd Nelson as Hot Rod, Eric Idle as Wreck-Gar, Leonard Nimoy as Galvatron, Robert Stack as Ultra Magnus, and Orson Welles as Unicron. All of them ended up replaced in the TV episodes following the movie. The TV show and movie did, however, have the late Scatman Crothers as the voice of Jazz, plus John Moschitta as Blurr.
  • Transformers Animated has "Weird Al" Yankovic guest-starring in two episodes as Wreck-Gar. Two actors from The Transformers: The Movie return: Judd Nelson reprises his role as Rodimus for the Season 3 three-part opener, and John Moschitta portrays Blurr once again.
• Brutal Legend: The voice actor cast reads like a "Who's who" of Heavy Metal musicians.
• The Doctor Who story "The End Of Time" has two celebrity voices: Brian Cox as the Elder Ood and Timothy Dalton as the narrator. The "voice" part of "celebrity voice actor" is subverted with Dalton via Narrator All Along. "The Doctor's Wife" also has Michael Sheen as the voice of House.
• Ron Perlman narrates every Fallout game. He does, however, have an extensive background in voice acting as well as screen acting.
  • Liam Neeson as the player character's dad in Fallout 3.
• Coraline has Dakota Fanning, Teri Hatcher, and Ian McShane on the cast, however they're barely featured on anything other than the behind-the-scenes featurettes. Also, though most people assumed that the casting of Hatcher is for promotional purposes (because the movie's target audience obviously consists of Desperate Housewives fans), her voice acting turns out to be So Cool Its Awesome.
• Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2 stick mostly with "regular" voice actors for most of their casts, but have a few celebrities in each. Seth Green, Lance Henriksen and Marina Sirtis qualify for the first game, and Green is joined by Claudia Black, Carrie-Anne Moss, Yvonne Strahovski, Tricia Helfer, Michael Hogan and Martin Sheen in the second.
  • Lance Henriksen will be returning for the last piece of DLC for Mass Effect 2.
  • Freddie Prinze, Jr. voices James Vega in Mass Effect 3. Judging from his interview about he seems psyched for it.
• Kate Mulgrew and Tim Russ show up in Dragon Age. Mulgrew also has a part in Dragon Age 2.
  • Claudia Black also voices a major character in Origins, and Tim Curry was one of the antagonists.
  • Eve Myles is in Dragon Age 2.
• The Legend of Spyro Trilogy features Elijah Wood as the titular dragon, Gary Oldman as his mentor, Ignitus, and a rotating series of stars as his sidekick Sparx. (David Spade, Billy West, and Wayne Brady, if you're curious, though the middle one IS primarily a voice actor.)
• David Warner as Hugo Artemis Solon Saturnicus Reginald Arthur Rune. Could also count as Most Wonderful Sound.
• Kiefer Sutherland as Sgt. Roebuck in Call Of Duty: World At War.
  • Kiefer Sutherland and Elizabeth Berkley were Billed Above the Title in order to promote and sell Armitage III. This was during the early 90's, when anime's popularity hadn't quite taken off yet. Minor characters in the movie were voiced by professional voice actors though. They also brought in Juliette Lewis to voice Naomi in the sequel movie.
• Dom DeLuise was a celebrity before getting into voice acting, being a favorite of Mel Brooks. Unlike a lot of celebrities though, he actually ended up sticking with voice acting for the rest of his life after his first voice acting role as Jeremy in The Secret of NIMH, along with live action roles.
• Lucy Stillman of the Assassin's Creed series is played by Kristen Bell. Likewise, Shaun Hastings is voiced by British comedian Danny Wallace.
• Disney went with this trope in the 1967 feature The Jungle Book with voice work by Phil Harris, Sebastian Cabot, George Sanders, and Louis Prima.
• Disney did it as early as 1951 with Alice in Wonderland, casting Jerry Colonna and Ed Wynn as the March Hare and the Mad Hatter, respectively (both were legendary radio stars at the time).
• Mobile Suit Gundam franchise enjoys using celebrities for voice actors, usually people who are already experienced voice actors. Most notably, Mark Hildreth, the T.V. Actor, as Heero Yuy in Gundam Wing, as well as Matt Hill, the world-saving athlete, as Kira Yamato in Gundam Seed.
• Several characters in Gargoyles were voiced by the stars of Star Trek: The Next Generation, most notably Jonathan Frakes (Also an Ink Suit Actor) as Xanatos and Marina Sirtis as Demona.
  • He didn't appear often, but Brent Spiner turned in a very mischievous Puck (bizarre Puck is apparently more typical of Spiner's roles).
    • In fact, quite a few Star Trek alumni turned up: Avery Brooks, LeVar Burton, Michael Dorn, Kate Mulgrew, Nichelle Nichols and Colm Meaney (not to mention some who were in the movies, like Paul Winfield and David Warner). The Other Wiki now has a full list of actors who worked both on Star Trek and Gargoyles.
• Phil Hartman, of course, was this when he voiced Troy McClure, Lionel Hutz, and one-shot characters on The Simpsons. He's a bit of a subversion, though. Before his star rose with Saturday Night Live, Hartman already had some voice-acting credits under his belt. He just kept it up after becoming famous.
• Tom Wilson and Mary Steenburgen reprised their roles of Biff Tannen and Clara Clayton-Brown for Back to The Future: The Animated Series. Doc, however, was voiced by Dan Castellaneta. The Telltale games, however, feature Christopher Lloyd himself as Doc Brown (he also played the role in the cartoon's live-action segments, but he was dubbed by Castellaneta).
• Hugh Laurie, Mr. Little in the Stuart Little movies, was the only cast member who returned for the animated TV series (though the DVD movie does feature the voices of the live-action main cast, including Michael J. Fox).
• Mostly averted in Winnie the Pooh. Other than John Cleese as The Narrator and Craig Ferguson as Owl, most of the cast consists of professional voice actors.
• Samuel L. Jackson has done voice acting in Afro Samurai, The Boondocks, Grand Theft Auto, and The Incredibles. His larger-than-life persona helps. To his credit, these roles have actually helped him build a fair reputation as a voice actor.
  • And then subverted with his role as Mace Windu on the Star Wars: The Clone Wars TV series being played by Terrence Carson.
• Former child star Andrew Lawrence was the voice of T.J. Detweiler in Recess (from season two onwards). Eerily enough, at the time, T.J. looked just like him!
• Chester McBadbat from The Fairly OddParents was originally voiced by Malcolm in the Middle star Frankie Muniz during the first few seasons. He was eventually replaced with a professional voice actor in the later seasons when Frankie started going through puberty.
• Mark Hamill has actually become more recognized for being a voice actor than he has for being Luke Skywalker in Star Wars. He moved onto voice acting in the first place because he was failing as an on-screen actor. He's earned particular recognition for his role as The Joker in various media.
• Early episodes of Captain Planet had such big names as Meg Ryan, Martin Sheen, Sting, Jeff Goldblum in various villainous roles and Whoopi Goldberg as Gaya, although by the second and third seasons these had been replaced by professional voice actors.
  • Also of note is that Tom Cruise was attached to voice Cap, but it didn't work out.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic's two-part Season 2 premiere guest-stars non other than John de Lancie of Star Trek fame as the premiere's villain Discord, who is essentially Q as a dragon...thing. Its awesome. Although to his credit, he already had plenty of voice acting experience on cartoon shows before starring as Discord.
• A notoriously bad live-action example was the English-language dub of Roberto Benigni's Pinocchio (2002), which used an All-Star Cast: Breckin Meyer as Pinocchio (whom Benigni plays onscreen), Glenn Close as the Blue Fairy, and in the supporting roles David Suchet, John Cleese, Eric Idle, Topher Grace, Queen Latifah, Cheech Marin, Eddie Griffin, Kevin James, James Belushi, and Regis Philbin. The quality of the performances varies wildly and no one's work escapes the Hong Kong Dub.
• Claudia Black made a surprise appearance in the North American dub of Steel Angel Kurumi.

1. ↑ Namely, Soundwave never goes to Earth and Optimus dies; by the time he's revived, Ravage and Devastator were both killed gruesomely