See title.
I doubt it, partly because it takes no time and little effort to do voice work. But I assume that makes it a great gig, because your commuting time is longer than the time you spend working and grabbing a check.
But these are just my assumptions based on no data whatsoever. Didn’t we have someone whose daughter did voice work for stuff like King of the Hill?
I also doubt it - not only (or even so much) because it’s less time and work for the actor, but because it’s less critical to have a big celebrity do the job (I’d assume more people can do quality voice work than can carry a starring role in a big budget live action picture)…Tom Hanks in the Toy Story movies was the probably one of the biggest stars in one of the biggest money making animated movie series ever, these figures (if true) seem to support the idea that he made even more in his live action roles.
From what I’ve heard recently, most actors doing animation for the first time are surprised by how little they get paid, even if it’s for Pixar, Disney, or Dreamworks. Having said that, it’s relative; they probably get $30k or so, for just a few hours work spread over a couple of years. If they’re used to hundreds of thousands or even millions it seems a paltry sum, but I’d be deliriously happy to be paid that much*.
*At least half of it goes to taxes and Agents and such, so the actor doesn’t end up with too much really.
The voices for the Simpsons make much more money than they ever did as actors. However, they weren’t major stars before doing the Simpson’s voices.
My collection of old computer games suggests that voice work comes a lot cheaper. The Gabriel Knight series (1993-1999) consists of three games, and first and third of which were animated. In these installments the title character is voiced by Tim Curry, who you may have heard of. The second one was produced during the live action video phase of the mid '90s, and the title character is played by Dean Erikson, who you probably haven’t heard of. His only other acting role listed on the IMDb was playing a waiter in a few episodes of Frasier.
Sidekick Grace Nakimura was voiced by Leah Remini in the first game. Remini is now best known for playing the wife on The King of Queens, but had appeared in supporting roles in a number of popular TV shows prior to GK1. In GK2, Grace was played by Joanne Takahashi, an actress with little previous professional experience and who has not gone on to a particularly distinguished film or television career. Her IMDb entry does indicate that she mostly does theater, but she doesn’t even have her own Wikipedia entry so I suspect she’s not a big Broadway star or anything.
I listen to regular podcasts by Rob Paulson (Yakko, Pinky, Raphael, etc.) and he has made comments about the movies that do primarily “star” casting vs. voice actor casting and the pay discrepancies. Stars (who mostly get paid to do their own voice) still get paid more than voice actors with the ability to do dozens of voices, but I imagine it is somewhat less than an onscreen appearance.
Venerable VO actor Billy West did a column about this subject about five or ten years ago. He felt at the time that yes, big name actors were getting paid ridiculous amounts of money for voice over work. He put most of the blame on Mike Myers’ mega-success with Shrek. Although West didn’t really fault Myers personally (he said that he thought Myers did a nice job) he did mention that the idea of say paying Cameron Diaz +$10 million dollars for Shrek 2 was insane. I would agree as Shrek 2, while good, was inferior to the first (never bothered with any after it). But the films all made serious money so the studios just continued to shell out huge paychecks.
This trend though was exactly that, a trend. In the late 90s and early 2000’s CGI animation was still very expensive so the few films that came out were of extremely good quality, story wise (think *Shrek *(one!), Toy Story (1-3), Finding Nemo, WALL-E etc.). As the technology got cheaper and more cartoons got made the quality immediately began to suffer. Today only the top CGI films from Pixar/Disney or Dreamworks are willing to pay millions up front for big name stars.
You could make a case that even before Shrek, it started with Robin Williams’ performance in Disney’s Aladdin. He only got paid scale ($75,000) up front for that, with no option for residuals. When, surprise, it turned out to be Disney’s biggest hit ever Williams felt that his talent was being taken for granted and they feuded for awhile. With merchandising Disney probably cleared close to a billion dollars from the film, and everyone knew that 95% of its success was because of Williams’ manic performance as the Genie. So when it came time to do the sequel & TV show they couldn’t reach an agreement and Homer Simpson (veteran VO actor Dan Castellaneta) did his best Robin Williams impression.
The rationale for using big name stars instead of voice actors is that big name stars get invited to every tv talk show and so can plug the movie with personal appearances. There’s probably some truth to it. If you see Tom Hanks on the Today Show and Ellen in the afternoon and Letterman at night and the next day on The Daily Show and Conan all with cute clips from the movie and then he flies to England and does half a dozen shows there and across Europe and into Japan, no question that the grosses will be larger.
Therefore paying him more is worth it because the RoI is greater. He gets a whole lot more than 30K, a whole lot, but even if it’s less than his normal multi-millions, he can slip the whole thing in between high paying gigs.
Stars can also do a VoiceOver gig in a day or so, without other actors needing to be present. Any fee is found money for a few hours’ work.
Stars in Disney movies go back a lot further than Robin Williams. Off the top of my head I can think of one of the Gabors in The Aristocats, Louie Prima in The Jungle Book, and Buddy Hackett in The Little Mermaid.
I think Jungle Book is where it started, mostly. It also had Phil Harris, who was popular on the radio, Sebastian Cabot, and George Sanders, who won an Oscar for “All About Eve”.
The Jungle Book may have been the most star-studded of Disney’s old features, but certainly not the first to have celebrity voices.
Peggy Lee did several voices in Lady and the Tramp, 12 years prior. (None as major as any of the characters in JB, but she was obviously cast as a draw - one of her characters (the female dog in the pound) is based on her.)
Cabot’s first Disney appearance (that I can tell) was in The Sword in the Stone 4 years before Jungle Book.
Prior to that, they seemed pretty pleased with themselves for having Dinah Shore narrate part of Fun and Fancy Free (as well as, of course, singing).
I’m sure you just mean that as hyperbole… but given that the two films before Aladdin were Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast (which were huge successes) and the one after was The Lion King (which was an even huger success), and given that plenty of other parts of Aladdin without the genie are entertaining and well thought of, I think it’s a bit of a stretch to imply that Aladdin would have failed with a different actor in that role. Robin Williams was clearly fantastic as the genie, but the movie would still have been good without him.
Something I have gleaned from listening to commentary tracks from several animated features is that voice work is very appealing to big-time actors outside of the income. It is a much smaller time commitment than a live action film, and with no physical requirements other than showing up to the recording studio, so no 3 a.m. makeup calls. Another bonus is that many of them like to do it for the prestige it gains them with their kids. Apparently voicing a cartoon rabbit is way more impressive to a 6-year-old than playing a cyborg assassin or whatever. 
After they came to a new agreement, he did come back to do the third one, Aladdin and the King of Thieves, written to tie up the series neatly.
I think it could have been successful without him, but I think Williams’ performance made it the blockbuster that it was. And although after 30+ years Williams’ manic, stream of consciousness style of comedy can be pretty freakin’ annoying, he is very good at it. And it’s impossible for anyone else to do it without it just sounding like an imitation of him.