I was suprised that Seth Macfarlane does the voice for Stewie, Peter, Quagmire and Brian on Family Guy
I wonder what his real voice sounds like 
Any other examples?
Billy West did the voices of Ren and Stimpy from seasons 3-5
He was Stimpy for all five season but Ren as well for only seasons 3-5
Don’t have a cite but I believe James Doohan voiced more than one role in the animated Star Trek.
I saw Seth McFarlane on David Letterman and his voice is most similar to Brian’s. It took me a second to place the voice because I didn’t recognize his name. But it’s definitely closest to Brian’s.
Yep – closer to Brian. And also to Tom Tucker, the announcer.
Of course, “The Simpsons” is a classic example. Dan Castellaneta, Nancy Cartwright, Hank Azaria, and Harry Shearer all do a plethora of voices, and others do multiple characters too. I think those 4 do the most.
Is it true that the Yeardley Smith is using her natural voice when acting Lisa’s role?
And on Futurama, Billy West did Fry, the Professor, Zoidberg, Zapp Brannigan, the human cop, and a variety of minor characters. His real voice sounds most like Fry.
That used to be quite common. In the sixties, there was a wretched animated series about the Beatles with only two actors, Paul Frees and Lance Percival, provided the four fab voices. (Mr. Percival would later provide a voice in Yellow Submarine.) Jean Vander Pyl gave voice to both Wilma Flintstone and Pebbles, and a small list of frequent guest stars (John Stephenson, Daws Butler, Howard Morris, et al) would frequently speak for multiple characters in the same episode. Mel Blanc, of course, could frequently be found in Warner Brothers sound stages talking to himself in multiple voices (Bugs and Daffy, Bugs and Yosemite Sam — but not Elmer Fudd) as well as the occassional sound effect like Dino the Dinosaur and Jack Benny’s car.
I think she might play it a bit higher to sound younger, but it’s very, very close to her natural voice.
Yeardley Smith played Greg’s secretary on “Dharma & Greg.” She kind of sounded like Lisa.
Trey Parker and Matt Stone do almost every male voice in South Park and the movie Team America: World Police.
On Transformers, Peter Cullen did the voices of Optimus Prime, Ironhide, and a few others.
Any good voice actor can do multiple voices. The career voice actors are capable of many, and that is preferable to producers as it is cheaper to pay one person to do multiple jobs than several people to do the same. Consider Mel Blanc.
I do recall reading somewhere though that the cutoff nowadays is five voices per person, because after five, the way the union wages work out, it is actually cheaper to bring in another person.
The exception to the multiple voices = good rule seems to be those that have a unique voice that becomes their trademark and is pretty much the same for several characters in several shows, like Cree Summer, who did the voice of Suzy Carmichael on Rugrats and Numbah 5 in Codename: Kids Next Door, among many, many others.
Daws Butler did many voices for Hanna-Barbera. In the 3 cartoons in the half-hour “Huckleberry Hound” show, for example, he would do 5 or 6 voices, including most of the main characters…
I thought the name sounded familiar…she was Freddie on the Cosby spinoff “A Different World”. Looking at her IMDB page, she was also Elmyra on “Tiny Toon Adventures”, which I would NEVER have picked up on.
I saw an interview about Dan Castellaneta (possibly on a Simpsons DVD) where someone said watching Dan perform was nothing short of miraculous. There would be scenes in which he would be doing several voices and could switch between them without missing a beat.
At the very bottom of her IMDB list it says she did Penny on Inspector Gadget! :eek:
I never would have guessed she was the same as Elmyra or Susie Carmichael. My jaw dropped a little when I saw she did Penny…wowsers.
Hal Smith, who was most famous as Otis the Drunk on The Andy Griffith Show, was also most of the voices on Davey and Goliath.
Even Cree doubles up occasionally. For example, she plays Numbah 5’s older sister as well as Numbah 5 herself.
I also believe that five is currently the maximum number of roles that you can have one actor play without paying extra. We just came out of doing the second round of voice recording for the game I’m working on and my producer made sure that we spread the bit parts around so that nobody read more than four.
I can’t believe nobody has mentioned Frank Welker already. The guy’s done so many voices, it’s easier to list which movies and shows he hasn’t worked on.
Yes, it’s really amazing to work with professional voice actors. They have such an incredible amount of vocal control. During a typical session the actors would do three initial reads of each line. The real professionals would give you a slightly different delivery for each read that could be used as a basis for directing the performance:
“Okay, give us three more like the second reading. But add a little more worry and try to put the emphasis on ‘my’ rather than ‘father’.”
And they’d nail it. While holding their voice in character. It was like setting the dials on a synthesizer.