Armin Shimerman is pretty famous, especially if you’re a bit nerdy (and let’s face it, if you’re reading this you probably are). He was Quark in ‘Star Trek: Deep Space Nine’ and Principal Snyder in ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’; you may remember he got eaten by hyenas in the last one there. Funny thing is that he only joined a drama group because a girl he liked joined, she left 2 months later and he remained. Since then he has appeared in a lot of things ‘Joan of Arcadia’, ’Dr. Vegas’ ‘Numb3rs’, ‘The Tick’, ‘ER’ but most of his work has been voicing over games.

 

I assume he had a very large role in the game ‘Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - The Fallen’ reprising his role as Quark but outside of the Star Trek world he’s played Dr. Nefarious in ‘Ratchet: Deadlocked’, General Skarr in ‘The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy’, Green Goblin in ‘Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2’ as well as doing several characters for ‘Mass Effect 2’

 

Of course here he is talking about; you guess it, Star Trek.

 

 

 

 

 

Brain Cox (not to be mistaken for the famous Physicist with the same name) is a Scottish actor born in 1946 and is a Shakespearean Actor who’s portrayal of King Lear is apparently a sight to behold. Off stage though, his most famous role is that of William Stryker in the X-Men movie series. With other live action appearances on the remake of ‘The Day of the Triffids’, ‘Dr Who’, ‘The Escapist’, ‘The Flying Scotsman’, ‘The Bourne Supremacy’, ’Troy’ and so many others in his 40+ year career.

 

While giving those speeches in the Killzone series is impressive he hasn’t done too much other voice work. Appearing in ‘Fantastic Mr. Fox’, ‘Scooby-Doo and the Samurai Sword’, ‘The Colour of Magic’, ‘Agent Crush’ and ‘Battle for Terra’.

 

Here he is teaching a child Shakespeare.

 

 

 

 

 

Everywhere is the short answer but I guess you want a bit more than that. James Arnold Taylor a pretty good impressionist and as such does a lot of work pretending to be somebody else. Like Johnny Depp aka Captain Jack Sparrow in ‘Kingdom Hearts 2’and Willy Wonka in the ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’ game or doing Leonardo’s voice in the ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ game, Obi-Wan Kenobi in ‘Star Wars: The Clone Wars’ series or maybe you would prefer Pippin in the movie-video-game of ‘The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring’. He’s also the current voice for Fred Flintstone, who knew they still needed one?

 

Of course that’s just one aspect of doing voice work and he doesn’t spend his whole career copying people, he’s done notable work like voicing (AH-HA-HA) Tidus from ‘Final Fantasy X’, Ash in ‘The Animatrix’, Yggdrasill in ‘Tales of Symphonia’, the Green Arrow in ‘Batman: The Brave and the Bold’ and he’s also done work on the new ‘Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore’ movie.

 

Chances are though you’ve heard his voice and not even realised it wasn’t who you thought it was. As this next video from his “Talking to Myself” act shows.

 

 

 

 

 

Robin Atkin Downes is just another one of those voice actors that manage to seamlessly retroactively seep into everything you’ve ever liked. This British born actor is in so many great franchises that I’m a little taken back. He was Lt. Kim in ‘Gears of War’ and provided many of those guttural noises the locust make in GoW2, was The Prince in ‘Prince of Persia: Warrior Within’ (no Yuri Lowenthal who appeared in the first list but still good), Sean in ‘The Saboteur’, The Medic in ‘Team Fortress 2’ and Tenzin in ‘Uncharted 2: Among Thieves’.

 

Other than those he’s done work on ‘Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker’, ‘Final Fantasy XIII’, ‘Ratchet & Clank: A Crack in Time’, ‘Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen’, ‘Madworld’, ‘God of War: Chains of Olympus’, ‘Mass Effect’ and that’s without going into the movie and animation side of things. The only thing that is less than impressive is his live-action work.

 

Robin is quite a fan of youtube, has his own channel and probably uses it to showcase his work (or just to show-off, you decide) and this is one of the many videos he’s put up showing many of games he’s worked on.

 

 

 

 

 

Rob Wiethoff, he’s so unknown at the moment that he doesn’t even have his own Wikipedia page, which is pretty unprecedented in my research so far. Then again he has only been in two other things prior to his work on Red Dead Redemption. Playing Turk in ‘The Outside’; (as well as being the producer) and playing a Court Officer in ‘16 Blocks’. That’s all set to change though as he’s in post-production of ‘Double Tap’ playing Detective #2.

 

There seems to be a pattern here with Rockstar games. In Part 2 we showed Michael Hollick who played Niko Bellic in GTA IV , he was also a relative unknown. It’s probably policy to get somebody that hasn’t been in a lot because it means they don’t have to be paid as much (I’m sure Samuel Jackson from GTA: SA cost a bundle) plus the amount of time it takes to record all the lines for these games can be over a year; so better known actors simply can’t spare the time.

 

Will this be his biggest role and he’ll just drift into obscurity or will this just be the a starting point for a fantastic career? Time will tell. Right now though I can’t find a single video of him instead here’s the trailer for ‘The Outside’...I don’t think I’ll see the movie.

 

 

 

So that’s it three lists; Part One, Part Two and now Part Three. Showing you 30 great actors and actresses that help bring the games we love to life. If I’ve missed off your favourite voice actor then please sign up and leave a comment here or in our forums. Chances are very low that another one of these will be made but then again, I said that in Part 2 so who knows; they might be included if Part 4 ever gets made.