The voice of F. Murray Abraham narrating an eposode of Nature is wafting in from the other room and it makes me curious how many well-established voices keep coming up in such settings and in commercials and PSAs.
Help me name some of the more recognizable ones working today.
Peter Coyote
Alec Baldwin
David McCullough
Michael C. Hall
Other names to add appear on this list atNature > Season 28 and there are several woman whose names I wasn’t able to pull out of thin air.
The ubiquitous Dunald Sutherland.
Patrick Stewart
Morgan Freeman
Robert Redford
Does Mike Rowe count? Even without his Ford commercials and “Dirty Jobs,” he has been a familiar narrator of programs, most notably “Deadliest Catch.” His voice has been familiar to me for years.
William Shatner narrates many science specials, as do Avery Brooks and Michael Dorn. Their voices are instantly recognizable. I have also heard Harry Shearer narrate a few programs.
Sigourney Weaver has also narrated quite a few nature shows.
Yes, indeed! In fact, I’m hoping by way of this thread to put names with some of those voices that keep coming up in so many places. I’ve done some preliminary poking around at Wikipedia with no great luck for lists of well-known voices.
Nova and other PBS shows have some I would love to be able to associate a name with.
Tom Selleck
Jim Dale!!
The late great George Page.
Werner Herzog – he sort of deserves his own category.
Sam Waterston on PBS.
The Voice: James Earl Jones
Gene Hackman does a lot of voice work for commercials. He’s voiced ads for CNN, GTE, Lowes, Oppenheimer Funds, and United Airlines.
Brooks Moore. (How It’s Made).
I’m surprised that nobody has mentioned Don LaFontaine yet. He truly deserves his own category.
That would be the “Posthumous” category.
Opening up the posthumous category full throttle:
Rod Serling (Jacques Cousteau)
Richard Basehart
Olivier (The World at War)
Alexander Scorby (classy voice-overs in the 1960’s)
Another ubiquitous classy voice-over from then; I can’t remember his name, but he played Woody Allen’s lawyer in “The Front” (not Stephen Boyd, but his voice was similar).
Liev Schreiber has an extensive record of doing PBS voiceover work, Nova and Nature in particular. He’s also the go-to guy for HBO sports documentaries too.
Last week my daughter was watching a NatGeo nature special, and the narrator sounded so familiar, I had to go and look it up. Turns out it was Richard Kiley, and I recognized him from Jurassic Park. I had to chuckle as I thought that the nature special had spared no expense!
How could you forget Richard Kiley?