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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'
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.
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Often turn out to be examples of [[Ink Suit Actor|Ink Suit Actors.]] See also [[Pop Star Composer]] for the musical equivalent.
{{examples
* Nathan Fillion, Adam Baldwin, and Alan Tudyk come together once more in ''[[Halo|Halo 3: ODST]]''. Yes, Bungie Studios is mostly staffed by [[Firefly|Browncoats]].
* [[Trope Codifier|Codified]] by [[Robin Williams]]' role as the Genie in ''[[Aladdin (Disney film)|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 [[Kick the Dog|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 (
* 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:
** And because ''[[Kingdom Hearts]]'' set the precedent, the English dub of anything that features [[Final Fantasy VII|Cloud Strife]] will have this by default.
*** Speaking of ''[[Final Fantasy]]'' and celebrities, [[Iron Chef|Takeshi Kaga]] as Golbez in the Japanese releases of the [[Nintendo DS]] remake of ''[[
* Sheena Easton voiced the Groomer on ''[[
** The entire cast of ''All Dogs Go To Heaven: The Series'' was made of stars.
** Sheena Easton also voiced [[Fiery Redhead|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
*** 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 [[The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
* ''[[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 (
*** ''Dark of the Moon'' adds another example: [[Leonard Nimoy]] as Sentinel Prime.
** Long before that, ''[[Transformers:
** ''[[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 [[
* The ''[[
* [[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 (
* ''[[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 [[Star Trek:
** Lance Henriksen will be returning for the last piece of [[Downloadable Content|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.
* [[Star Trek: Voyager
** [[Claudia Black]] also voices a major character in ''Origins'', and [[Tim Curry]] was one of the antagonists.
** [[Eve Myles]] is in ''Dragon Age 2''.
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* 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 [[Veronica Mars|Kristen Bell]]. Likewise, [[Deadpan Snarker|Shaun Hastings]] is voiced by British comedian Danny Wallace.
* Disney went with this trope in the 1967 feature ''[[The Jungle Book (Disney film)|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 (Disney film)|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 ''[[
** He didn't appear often, but Brent Spiner turned in a very mischievous Puck ([[The Fair Folk|bizarre]] Puck is apparently more typical of Spiner's roles).
*** In fact, quite a few ''[[
* Phil Hartman, of course, was this when he voiced Troy McClure, Lionel Hutz, and one-shot characters on ''[[The Simpsons (
* 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 [[
* [[Samuel L. Jackson]] has done voice acting in ''[[
** And then subverted with his role as Mace Windu on the ''[[Star Wars:
* Former child star Andrew Lawrence was the voice of T.J. Detweiler in ''[[Recess]]'' ([[The Other Darrin|from season two onwards]]). Eerily enough, at the time, T.J. looked ''just like him''!
* Chester McBadbat from ''[[The Fairly
* [[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
* A notoriously bad live-action example was the English-language dub of Roberto Benigni's ''Pinocchio'' (2002), which used an [[All
* [[Claudia Black]] made a surprise appearance in the North American dub of ''[[Steel Angel Kurumi]]''.
{{reflist}}
[[Category:Trivia Trope]]
[[Category:Voice Acting Tropes]]
[[Category:
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