13 Hollywood Stars That Voiced Your Favorite Animated Movies
by Gary Susman
So many big Hollywood stars lend their voices to animated films. Which is mostly why we pay to see them. Here are a few of your favorites.
1. Nicolas Cage
Cage first leant his voice to animated fare in 2006's forgettable "The Ant Bully," with fellow Oscar-winners Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts. His voice talents are best remembered in the role of caveman patriarch, Grug, in the 2013 hit "The Croods."
2. Woody Allen
Allen's about the last guy you'd associate with kid-friendly entertainment, but he took the lead role in "Antz" (1998) as a favor to DreamWorks Animation chief Jeffrey Katzenberg. Turned out he was perfectly suited to the role of a neurotic, nebbishy insect.
3. Albert Brooks
Brooks, whose neurotic, self-lacerating humor often has him fielding comparisons to Woody Allen, is also an unlikely candidate for kid-movie stardom, but there he is, flourishing as the over-protective father Marlin in 2003's "Finding Nemo."
4. George Clooney
At last, a role where Clooney couldn't rely on his looks. Instead, he uses his effortlessly masculine voice to play the roguish title character in Wes Anderson's stop-motion animated adaptation of Roald Dahl's "Fantastic Mr. Fox" (2009). Even after he's figuratively emasculated (he gets his tail cut off), Clooney's Fox is still a charismatic charmer.
5. Robin Williams
It took animation to capture Williams at his most mercurial. Only Disney artists could keep up with his Genie in "Aladdin" (1992) as Williams' morphed through endless quicksliver celebrity voice impersonations. He also narrated the movie and sang three numbers. Aladdin may have been a petty thief, but it was Williams who stole the movie.
6. Orson Welles
As he aged, Welles may have lost the directorial mojo of "Citizen Kane" and "Touch of Evil," but he never lost that resonant baritone that served him through decades of actor-for-hire roles and TV commercials. His last gig, recorded just before he died in 1985, was "Transformers: The Movie," which also featured memorable voice-acting from Judd Nelson, Robert Stack and Leonard Nimoy. Wells played Unicron, a planet-sized villain who eats other worlds (insert girth joke here). Hey, it beats hawking frozen peas.
7. Paul Newman
By the time he played his final acting role, in "Cars" (2006), movie legend Newman had heard his voice transition from the cocky bark of a young man into the gravelly rasp of an 81-year-old. His role as four-wheeled old-timer Doc Hudson may not have been the swan song fans would have hoped for, but at least it was a nice tip of the hat to Newman's off-screen career in auto racing.
8. Ellen DeGeneres
As a comedian, DeGeneres is often understated and dry, but she couldn't have been better -- or more uncharacteristically manic -- as "Finding Nemo" sidekick Dory, a blue tang fish with a flitting attention span and a malfunctioning short-term memory. She turned out to be the movie's most beloved character. No wonder she's the focus of the upcoming sequel, "Finding Dory."
9. Gilbert Gottfried
Disney has a long and curious history of using blue comics in kid-friendly roles, from Cheech Marin to Patton Oswalt to Sarah Silverman. It's hard to imagine a bluer comic than the screeching funnyman who's known for telling the filthiest version of the "Aristocrats" joke, but he seems perfectly at home playing Iago, the villain's parrot sidekick in "Aladdin." Maybe that's how he got the role of the Aflac duck in those commercials.
10. Billy Joel
Disney's "Oliver and Company" (1988) updates Dickens' "Oliver Twist" to modern-day Manhattan, so who better to play the streetwise Artful Dodger than the "New York State of Mind" singer? The role marks Joel's only acting role to date. Also, the only time he's played a dog.
11. Vin Diesel
Before the "Fast and Furious" movies, Diesel was a character actor known less for his muscles than for his profoundly deep voice. Which he put to good use as the title character in "The Iron Giant" (1999). True, his voice went through a metallic filter, and he had little in the way of intelligible dialogue. Yet he still managed to give the massive robot a soul and give his performance a ring of pathos.
12. Matt Damon
Having just recently established himself as a leading man in movies like "Good Will Hunting" and "The Talented Mr. Ripley," Damon took the starring role in animated sci-fi misfire "Titan A.E." (2000). He plays Cale, a Luke Skywalker-ish hero who rises from obscurity after his late father entrusts him with a secret that will help him save humanity from an alien onslaught. Damon would continue to do voice-acting work in "Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron" and "Happy Feet 2," but "Titan A.E." remains a cult favorite.
13. John Ratzenberger
Ratzenberger was once best known for playing Boston-accented know-it-all Cliff Clavin on "Cheers." Over the past 20 years, however, he's enjoyed a second career as a voice actor. Pixar considers him such a good-luck charm that he's had a supporting role in every single one of the CGI studio's features, from 1995's "Toy Story" (he was Hamm, the piggy bank) to Fritz in the new "Inside Out." His truck in "Cars," Mack, got a nice in-joke during the closing credits, when, while watching car-themed versions of past Pixar movies, he realized that the supporting characters he liked were all played by the same actor -- namely, Ratzenberger himself.
