Marc Thompson was more than a "random character", Cohen: he actually voices a significant amount of the secondary cast and is easily among the show's most prominent V.A.'s, if not the most prominent. It does make me wonder, however, why he's the only one of that show's cast to really have a prescence afterwards in the voice acting scene.
Marc Thompson in general I've found to be a quite surprising voice actor, thanks in part to his ability to escape typecasting. I mean, looking at his resume, he's done:
"Cool" hero (Wolverine in the X-Men motion comic, Dante Vale in Huntik)
Comic hero (Kid Muscle in Ultimate Muscle)
Comic relief (his Daria roles, Casey Jones and Serling in TMNT)
Big Bad (Seth in Dinosaur King, Roman Goodwin in Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's, Drako in TMNT)
Animal sidekicks (Cherit in Huntik).
Given the limited amount of work for NY actors, that's darn impressive.
Sarah Gadon is another interesting one when it comes to surprising roles.
She's known as Beth in the Total Drama series, as well as Ruby Gloom, but live-action roles ae pretty different.
She started in Cadet Kelly, alongside Hilary Duff and Christy Carlson Romano (who would be with Sarah again in the ABC Family film The Cutting Edge 3).
Her next series will be a Mystery/Drama series that will air in ABC starting in April 28 called Happy Town.
I was amused - if not too surprised - to learn that Cree Summer's first major voice acting job was as the original voice of Penny on Inspector Gadget, starting when she was about fourteen. Her father, Don Francks, is credited as "Big MAD Agent," which is probably part of how she got the job. The voice actually doesn't sound all that much different from some of the characters she voices today.
That's true. I don't know how long he was in the music industry prior to becoming a voice actor, but I know that his first role was Gourry from Slayers. I didn't know that E.G. Daily was a signer too though.
I was surprised to learn that Billy West (Fry from Futurama, Stimpy the Cat from Ren and Stimpy) did the voice for Elmer Fudd in that Geico commercial.
There were some that have suprised me, like for example: when I started watching Scooby Doo I knew that Casey Kasem was the voice of Shaggy, but I had no idea he was also Alexander in Josie and the Pussycats and Robin on the Superfriends. When I first saw the other two shows and hear those characters speak I was like: "Is that Shaggy?" and it was.
Eventually I found this out which was pretty funny when you think about it, Jerry Dexter was the voice of Alan in Josie and the Pussycats and I knew he was the voice of Biff in Fangface but I had no idea that he was the voice of a teen trying to capture Scooby after he turned into a werewolf in one of the Scooby and Scrappy Doo episodes, I think it was called Where's The Werewolf?, of course after watching that episode it's so weird to hear him say, let's capture that werewolf, when he was in a couple of shows where he wasn't a character that was trying to harm or capture a good guy, but instead he was a good guy.
Actually have a question for you guys and gals about this subject and it's been bugging me for quite a while, so here goes: In the 13 Ghosts of Scooby Doo episode "Coast to Ghost", the villain of the episode is named Rankor and he was voiced by someone who i'm fairly certain was also the voice of a ghostly character in the cartoon series Darkwing Duck. I have done research online and I can't think of the name of the person; BTW the name of the Darkwing Duck episode is "Ghoul of my Dreams", if that helps any. I think it's either Frank Welker or Jim Cummings although i'm not sure, anybody have any idea who voiced both of these characters? It would really help me out.
And she does the female vocals in the Two and a Half Men theme. (Anyone know who does the male voices?)
I was surprised to find that Charlie Adler did almost all the voices on Cow and Chicken and I Am Weasel. His Cow voice in particular, since most of the voices that I've heard from him are kind of gravelly (e.g. Buster and Rhoderick from TTA). Speaking of TTA, I'm used to Tress MacNeille's higher voices like Babs, so I was surprised at the hoarser voices she can do, like Rhubella Rat or that kiwi in the Opus Christmas special.
Patrick Star and Broadway from Gargoyles sharing a VA was another surprise for me. Especially since I really like Gargoyles and really dislike SpongeBob.
Jeff Bennett is often quite hard for me to pick out since his range is just ridiculous. Dexter's Dad, Brooklyn, Johnny Bravo, Kowalski... there's just so much range among those voices alone, never mind what else he's done. Ditto for Billy West; I knew him first as Doug Funnie.
And perhaps the big one: Frank Welker doing any voice role that isn't just animal noises.
Another vote for Dee Bradley Baker as Olmec (at the very least, it's about as far removed from his Og voice as you can get) and Jaleel "Urkel" White as Sonic. Actually, I was even more surprised that Urkel also did Sonia and Manic on Sonic Underground.
...What? I don't care how non-canon it is, Sonic Underground had some good points. And I really don't think that Jaleel is that bad a singer, even in his Sonic voice. And his Sonia voice kind of sounds like my sister.
A number of animation voice actors had prior experience as singers and performed with bands or solo before their VA careers started. And it's been said often by voice acting instructors and in VA interviews that being a singer is a great asset to voice actors because you already have understanding of things like pitch, rhythm and timing -- all of which are important in voice acting.
Just off the top of my head, here's a list of voice actors with musical background:
Jess Harnell (FYI: his dad wrote the ending theme for "The Incredible Hulk")
Billy West
Debi Derryberry
E.G. Daily
Cree Summer
Thurl Ravenscroft
Grey DeLisle
Will Ryan
Katey Sagal
Jim Byrnes
Lacey Chabert
Phil Harris
Tom Kenny
Rob Paulsen
Mae Questel
Jim Cummings -- in the interview I did with Jim here at rabroad last fall, Jim talks about the "Warner Bros Band" he performed with:As for "surprises" hearing voices in 'toons, I have to say it's rare that happens for me because my interest in cartoon voice actors goes all the way back to childhood. (I don't watch as much anime though, so dub voices are at times more difficult for me to ID.)
But I did have one recently when I finally got around to playing "Ratchet and Clank" for the PS2. I thought Ratchet's voice was really interesting and unique and just couldn't place it. To my surprise, it turned out to be David Kaye. It sounds so far removed from his other characters I never would have guessed it was him.
If anything, the "surprises" I get come from voice actor on-camera appearances that I hadn't researched previously. Those are always a delight for me, like Stan Freberg's guest role on "Rosanne" or Dee Bradley Baker and Tara Strong on Nick's "Big Time Rush".
I also love the surprise of voice actor-related in-jokes/references, like an alien race in an episode of "Men In Black: The Series" being called the "Fraleyans" after Pat Fraley, who voiced Bob the Twin in the series (along with other incidental characters).
And in the King of the Hill S8 episode "Dale Be Not Proud," Dale is finally shown without his trademark hat and sunglasses, and he turns out to be
none other than Mike Judge.
Here's another such layered in-joke from Disney's "Enchanted" courtesy of IMDb:
"Enchanted" also has surprise cameos by Disney voice talents Jodi Benson (Little Mermaid), Paige O'Hara (Beauty and the Beast) and Judy Kuhn (Pocahontas).
I was surprised after learning many boys in animated cartoons were not given voices by folks of the same gender. The end credits for certain cartoon series ("Rugrats" and "The Simpsons", for example) did not help before I got home Internet access in 1999, since the names either appeared fast (I could never catch up to Charles (Chuckie) Finster's voice actor and her character at least or else I would have figured Thomas (Tommy) Pickles and Phillip (Phil) DeVille were also played by women), did not have the names of characters beside their respective voice actors, or had initials. The idea of female voice actors performing as young boys may have been unbelievable or even ridiculous to me when I was younger, but I understand the reasons for this sort of casting since the two series I mentioned have had very long runs, the characters did not age noticeably , and young boys playing young male characters would have most likely been replaced and not everyone would have been happy with the changes.
Creators of animated cartoons with young boys or male characters as main characters could have chosen men for the roles, but they made the creative decisions to choose either young boys or women for their characters. They may have wanted their characters to have more believable voices, either in the short term or the long term. Young boys and girls played by adults of their respective genders may not perform with believable or realistic voices, but their voices may suit their characters' personalities. This brings to mind something Droopy Dog once said: "In a cartoon, you can do anything" (used at the beginning at the Cartoon Network program "Down with Droopy D.").
There are many things to consider in the casting of voice actors for an animated cartoon series. For example, "The Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog" was produced in a short period of time and Miles (Tails) Prower had the voice of the same young boy for the entire series. When "Sonic's Christmas Blast" was produced just a few years after "The Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog", Tails' voice actor was replaced due to his voice changing after reaching adolescence.
Some animated cartoon series that were much better in earlier episodes could have ended much sooner with all of the voice actors still in their roles. "Hey Arnold" and "Arthur" are good examples, according to me.
Young boys and men have also performed as young girls or female characters in certain cartoons (Skeeter in "Muppet Babies" and Peppermint Patty in the animated "Peanuts" cartoons are some good examples). Sometimes the male characters don't have to be very young to have female voice actors (Jokey Smurf in "The Smurfs" and Rocket (Rocky) J. Squirrel, for example).
Casting all depends on the creators and the cartoons. It's all part of the creative process and all possibilities must be considered.
I think it's interesting how Andrew Francis started voice acting at age 9 and still does to this very day.
I remember how he voiced little boys like Genki from Monster Rancher and I noticed in the later MR episodes, Genki's voice started to change a little. And when Andrew's voice completely changed, he started voicing teenage guys like Gil from Johnny Test. Then Andrew started voicing adult characters like Lin Chung, The Parrot King, and Sammo Whale from Hero: 108.
Speaking of Bionicle, with the exception of the final episode (which has no sound period), Michael Dorn reprised his role as Mata Nui on Bioniclestory.com
Don't have any links, but Bill Ratner (Flint from G.I. Joe) does nearly all the voice overs for KCRA3, our NBC affiliate out of Sacramento, so that's pretty cool.
Voice actors seem to pop up on the Law and Order franchise a lot. Clancy Brown (Mr. Krab on SpongeBob, Lex Luthor on Justice league) was on L&O once, and on SVU I saw Mae Whitman (Katara from Avatar). Also, David Kaufman, Danny from Danny Phantom, was in an episode of CSI.
