Big-name voices drawn to animated films

Their visages enthrall us, their physiques amaze us. Why, then, are so many A-list stars so eager to deprive us of those pleasures by acting in animated films?

Why would acclaimed thespian Sir Ben Kingsley and his Boxtrolls costars - Elle Fanning, Simon Pegg, and Tracy Morgan - want to be in a film that won't allow them to use their actor's bag of tricks? No facial gestures or physical movements. No costumes, no props, no set.

Voice acting, after all, consists of speaking lines in a lonely sound booth.

What is certain is that the pervasion of big stars, beginning with Tim Allen and Tom Hanks in 1995's Toy Story, has helped fuel a resurgence of animated feature films as box-office contenders.

Since its Sept. 26 release, The Boxtrolls has pulled in nearly $100 million worldwide, while The Book of Life has grossed almost $70 million since Oct. 17.

What's more, the films have staying power. Frozen, which features voice performances by Kristen Bell, Jonathan Groff, and Idina Menzel, is still going strong a year after its release, with a total worldwide gross of nearly $1.3 billion.

Nabbing at least a couple of heavyweights has become de rigueur for animated films. New offerings this fall, including Big Hero 6 (opened Friday), Penguins of Madagascar (due Nov. 26) and The Book of Life collectively draw upon the star power of Maya Rudolph, Damon Wayans Jr., Benedict Cumberbatch, John Malkovich, Zoe Saldana, Diego Luna, Channing Tatum, and Christina Applegate.

Even actress/singer/fashionista Kelly Osbourne will be starring as a witch in Disney Television's new animated series, The 7D.

These films live and die by the humanity their voice stars bring to them. "Since they can't use their faces, their hands or arms to convey emotion," said Boxtrolls codirector Graham Annabel, "voice actors need to put everything in their voices."

The flood of hit animated films has brought a higher profile to a rarely discussed art form. The name stars may help sell pictures, but the full-time voice actors are the ones who sustain this small, insular world. They are used for a variety of products, including audiobooks, instructional videos and websites, TV and radio commercials, foreign film dubbing, even game-show announcing.

But voicing characters for animated films, TV shows, and video games is the fastest-growing sector in the voice acting world - and "one of the largest-growing fields in entertainment today," said David Bourgeois, who runs a voice recording studio and postproduction outfit in Albany, N.Y. called White Lake Music & Post.

To meet the increased demand for skilled voice actors, Bourgeois recently founded the training program Voice Coaches.

What do voice actors do?

"A lot of people think voice acting is just doing impressions or making funny voices," but "they act, in the full sense of the term," said Bill Farmer, who for 27 years has played Goofy, Pluto, and a troop of other Disney characters and stars as Doc in 7D.

Yeardley Smith, who voices the Simpson family's brainiac, Lisa, on the Fox mega-hit, began her career in theater. She realized in high school that audiences responded to her voice.

"In one play, before the first word was out of my mouth, the audience started laughing," she said.

"I didn't think voiceover was for me . . . not part of my plan for world domination," said Smith, who nonetheless couldn't ignore the many voice casting offers she got.

Now, the 50-year-old Smith considers the Simpsons her family, her home, her world - a strange world. "For 26 years," she said, "every time Lisa's had a birthday, she turns 8."

Voice actor Erica Schroeder studied musical theater at New York University.

"In the world of animated video games . . . casting directors love people who have a background in musical theater," said the actor, whose extensive voice credits include the popular Japanese anime Pokémon and its many cartoon and video spinoffs. "People with that kind of training can hear the intrinsic musicality of speech and the melody in the animated movements."

Ryan Potter, who stars as top hero Hiro in Big Hero 6, was apprehensive about the limitations imposed by voice recording. "It can be hard to convey emotion and energy only through your voice," he said. "But eventually, I found it freeing. . . . If I don't have to worry about landing on my mark or timing my lines, then I can ramble on and say the same lines over and over again until I'm happy with it."

The free play afforded cartoon actors allowed Annabel and his Boxtrolls codirector Anthony Stacchi to create an entirely new language for the film's titular creatures.

The best voice actors become co-inventors of their characters, and do creative work usually reserved for screenwriters and directors, said industry veteran Michael Sinterniklaas, who stars ithe TV series The Venture Brothers, Robotomy, and the 2003-09 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

"The work you do with your director is almost like jamming with another musician, where you just play around character concepts and dialogue," he said.

It might surprise fans to know that voice actors do not deliver lines while looking at their cartoon incarnation on a screen. Their voice tracks are set down long before animation begins, said Tom McGrath, a director and actor who originated the voice of the penguins in 2005's Madagascar and who plays the lead penguin in the new spinoff.

The players begin with a script that is then recorded, line by line, by each actor. The script often is modified depending on the actors' performances, said director Ash Brannon, whose films include Toy Story 2, Surf's Up, and the forthcoming Rock Dog.

"[Rock Dog costar] Eddie Izzard had just a few lines in the film that we recorded, like, a year ago," Brannon said. "His ability to improvise hilarious material on the spot was just mind-boggling, and he brought so much to the film, we kept expanding his part."

Before animation begins, the actors are called back - sometimes as many as 10 times - to redo lines.

"The recording sessions lasted nine months on The Book of Life," said director Jorge Gutierrez. "When you cast someone like Channing Tatum, who can improvise so well, you'll need to rerecord lines the other actors are delivering."

Engineers then choose the best version of each line. Finally, to help the animators match actors' facial gestures to their characters, some directors supply video footage of the actors speaking their lines.

It takes nine months to animate a feature film. Once completed, it is rescreened for voice accuracy, pitch, and tone, and some actors may be called in to rerecord lines.

Sounds insanely complicated. But "this is why so many animated films have two or three directors," Brannon said. "We have to work with a crew of 300 or more people and help them all work toward the same direction."

Typically, a feature takes three years to complete. In the case of the original Madagascar, it was five.

"But the whole time, we were working with hundreds of people who shared our passion for the work," McGrath said. "It can be a joyful process."

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