An Analysis of Celebrities Doing Voice Acting: Why It Works When It Works, and Doesn't When It Doesn't

It's something that frustrates the heck out of me, and a lot of other people as well. My second post on this very blog was about it. Folks online repeatedly point out how much of a problem it is, and yet the higher-ups in the entertainment industry just don't get the hint.

Of course, I am referring to celebrities' taking over voice acting and dominating it with an iron fist, making it harder and harder for professional voice actors to get jobs nowadays.

NOTE: most of the celebrity voices in Zootopia did a good job, I just wanted to
put a picture here and this was the first thing that came to mind.

No one is quite sure how or when the mindset that if a project has voice acting involved, the voice acting MUST be done by celebrities got started. Celebrities doing voice acting dates back to 1940's Pinocchio, with Cliff Edwards doing the voice of Jiminy Cricket. Nowadays, whenever an animated movie comes out, the voice cast will more likely than not consist entirely of celebrities. As if that isn't annoying enough, this trend has leaked into television shows as well - name one recent (as in, post-2010) cartoon that didn't have at least one celebrity as part of the main or recurring cast. You can't, can you?

Stunt-casting in animation is incredibly divisive, with some (like me) hating it and some defending it. Even those that hate it will admit, however, that there are celebrities who have proven themselves capable of being good voice actors as well: Robin Williams, Eddie Murphy, Jack Black, Steve Buscemi, and Martin Short to name a few. But for every celebrity voice acting performance that's good, there's a lot of celebrity voice acting performances that are bad, annoying, or unfitting.

Sooooooooooo... what are the main problems with celebrity voice acting other the whole "stealing jobs from professional voice actors far more qualified to do voice acting than some pop star" thing. Well, that's why I wrote this post. To help those who don't understand why we don't like seeing celebrities hog voice-over jobs actually, y'know, understand us a bit more.

Reason #1: Not Every Celebrity Has a Distinct Voice That Lends Itself to Animation

Part of what makes an iconic cartoon character so iconic is their voice. Name a cartoon character - any cartoon character. Mickey Mouse, Bugs Bunny, Bullwinkle, Yogi Bear, SpongeBob... would they be as memorable if they sounded like any other random dude off the street? Probably not.

The insistence that so many animated characters nowadays must be voiced by celebrities has resulted in so many animated characters not having very distinct, memorable voices. Some celebrities DO have voices that lend themselves well to animation - look at John Goodman. His voice lends itself well to, say, a big furry blue monster (Monsters Inc.) or a friendly tyrannosaurus rex (We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story). Even celebrities who DIDN'T do much if any voice acting had voices that lend themselves well to animation. Why do you think there are so many cartoon characters who sound like Ed Wynn and Peter Lorre?

And I'm not just talking about the characters drawn to resemble Peter Lorre.

And sometimes, even if the celebrity's voice isn't very distinct, they'll make up for that by actually doing a voice for their character. A good example of this is Mike Myers, who was the one to come up with the idea of giving Shrek a Scottish accent. As a result, Shrek has a memorable voice. When you hear that voice, even without seeing the character, you think "That's Shrek!". Other examples of this include Bryan Cranston as Vitaly in Madagascar 3, Jack Black as Lenny in Shark Tale, and Adam Sandler as Dracula in Hotel Transylvania.

But more often than not, we just have celebrities doing their natural voices and nothing more... and if the celebrity's voice, as is normally the case, sounds very "plain" and indistinct, it renders casting a celebrity as the voice of that character completely pointless. See also Kristen Bell and Jonathan Groff as Anna and Kristoff in Frozen, Justin Long and Hayden Panettiere as Humphrey and Kate in Alpha and Omega, and Sam Rockwell and Awkwafina in The Bad Guys. Even if the celebrity's performance isn't bad, if their voice just sounds like that of any other person on the on the street, what's the point of getting them to do voice acting? My older sister could've done the voice of Mavis in Hotel Transylvania instead of Selena Gomez and it wouldn't have made a difference.

Reason #2: Frequently a Celebrity is Cast as a Character That They Do Not Fit

When casting the voice for your character, one must think hard about whether or not they actually fit the character they're playing. For example, Nick Nolte did the voice of Vincent the Bear in Over the Hedge. And that worked because Nick's grizzled, growly voice fits a big, ferocious bear. Steve Buscemi as Randall Boggs in Monsters Inc. works because Steve's reedy voice and slimy performance fit a slender, chameleon-like monster (I've heard that when he first saw Randall's design, he asked if PIXAR was trying to typecast him). 

Now, let's list some examples of when a celebrity's voice DOESN'T fit the character... Rihanna and Anne Hathaway as characters that are supposed to be kids? Or Sam Rockwell (again) as the Wolf in The Bad Guys - the big, scary wolf just sounds like some easygoing dude? Where's the fun in THAT?

Okay, so he's a wolf. The idea is that everybody is afraid of him, right? You'd expect sort
of a growly voice, a voice with a lot of impact to it... not an Owen Wilson soundalike.

It's especially frustrating when a celebrity is cast as the voice of an iconic cartoon character. Every so often you'll get a celebrity who actually makes the effort to sound like the voice actor who originated the character (Justin Timberlake as Boo-Boo), but more often than not the celebrity just does their natural voice and nothing more - see also the celebrity voices in Scoob!, the DuckTales reboot, Jellystone!, and those horrid live action Smurfs movies. I guess the filmmakers' mindset is that audiences will be too distracted by it being the voice of a celebrity they like to notice that they don't sound like the character, but this isn't always the case. People are going to complain if they don't think an iconic cartoon character's voice doesn't sound right. Well, they USUALLY will - Matthew Lillard's Shaggy gets nothing but praise even though he sounds almost nothing like Casey Kasem. Don't ask me how THAT makes sense.

Did you know that when Disney's 2018 live action Winnie the Pooh film Christopher Robin was in production, Disney cast Chris O'Dowd as Tigger despite already having Jim Cummings voicing Pooh for the film? I guess they thought having a celebrity voice Tigger would sell more tickets. How did that work out for them? It didn't - test audiences complained that Tigger didn't sound like Tigger, so Chris was let go, and they brought in Jim Cummings to voice Tigger like they should've done in the first place. Which is a pretty big indication that people would prefer that the iconic character starring in your movie about them actually, y'know, sound like the character. People know how these characters sound, and it isn't like some celebrity chosen purely for their name.

Reason #3: Half the Time the Celebrity is Just Playing Themselves But Animated

This is the laziest form of celebrity voice-acting, and one of the most prominent - the celebrity isn't even playing a character, they're just playing themselves. Like, the character is even designed to look like the celebrity, and the entire joke is just "LOOK! It's this famous person but animated!".

Again, I point you towards the live action Smurfs movies. Instead of Grouchy Smurf, Brainy Smurf, and Smurfette, we get George Lopez Smurf, Fred Armisen Smurf, and Katy Perry Smurf. Other examples include Bee Movie ("it's Jerry Seinfeld, but as a bee!"), Rover Dangerfield ("it's Rodney Dangerfield, but as a dog!"), and, of course, Shark Tale, where only Jack Black can be bothered to actually do a voice.

Will Smith as a fish is incredibly disturbing.

Now, to be fair, sometimes a celebrity WILL initially intend to actually do a voice for their character, but the filmmakers will tell them to just be themselves. I read that was the case for Emma Stone in The Croods.

Reason #4: Half the Time the Celebrity is Only Cast in the Movie Because They're Popular Right Now and For No Other Reason

It's not just about being a celebrity, no, no... you also have to be a "flavor of the month" celebrity. Somebody who's really popular at the moment. If you were popular in the 1990s but not so much nowadays, you're likely going to get less offers to do animated movies.

This is something that PIXAR is reasonably good at avoiding. Richard Kind isn't exactly a "flavor of the month" celebrity, but that didn't stop them as casting him as Bing Bong in Inside Out. Other animation studios, on the other hand, are obsessed with making sure that every celebrity to lend their voice to their movies is popular right now. Look at Ice Age 5. Modern Family was popular when the movie came out, so the guy who plays Mitch voices a llama. The Big Bang Theory was popular too, so here's Bernadette as a sloth. Adam Devine was popular in 2016, so he's voicing a mammoth. And I can't be the only one who's tired of Maya Rudolph and/or Awkwafina being in every other animated movie that comes out nowadays, am I?

Trolls is basically a cornucopia of celebrity voices chosen purely because they were popular in 2016. James Corden, Gwen Stefani, the guy who plays Raj from The Big Bang Theory, Anna Kendrick, a bunch of random YouTube celebrities (THEY'RE going to draw people into the theater?). It's doubtful that any of them were cast for no other reason than because "well, hey, they're popular right now, right?".

Oddly, only Anna Kendrick and Justin Timberlake are mentioned
on the poster.

Reason #5: Half the Time the Character That This Celebrity is Doing the Voice of Doesn't Even Have a Very Large Role

What is the purpose of getting a celebrity to voice a character who barely has any screentime or lines? Immediately coming to mind is Neil Patrick Harris as the monkey in Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs. Don't get me wrong, I like Neil Patrick Harris, he's delightful, but there was zero reason to cast him as the monkey. Not only did they pitch up his voice so that you can't even tell it's him, but the monkey doesn't even have actual DIALOGUE. He literally just shouts random words: "STEVE!" "CAN!" "GUMMI BEARS!". That's it. Not only is this a complete waste of Neil's talents, wouldn't any of Neil's fans who heard he was in the movie be disappointed to find out that he barely even does anything in the movie?

Another Sony Pictures Animation example? Molly Shannon did the voice of the werewolf wife in Hotel Transylvania... and she has, what, two lines? Yeah, nice use of Molly Shannon, guys. Or how about Zootopia? Disney made such a huge deal out of Shakira being in the movie, hyping her character up and acting like she was one of the main characters (she's the first celebrity voice listed after Ginnifer Goodwin and Jason Bateman in the cast announcement at the beginning of the post)... the character barely has any lines outside of the song. She's literally just there to go "LOOK! We have Shakira in our movie!".

And are fans of Harvey Guillen really going to see the Garfield movie just to hear him do dog noises? I'm sure Harvey's great in other things, but I sincerely doubt anyone who goes to see the movie is even going to care that Odie's various barks and growls are provided by a celebrity.

Reason #6: A Lot of Celebrities Are Jerks

Okay, just so we're clear, not ALL celebrities are jerks. If you use Google search, you can find entire lists of celebrities who are really nice. I've heard that Adam Sandler is a nice guy. Henry Winkler, Patrick Warburton, and Jaleel White I know are nice people.

But I'm really getting tired of liking a celebrity's voice acting performance and then finding out that they're a jerk. Andy Dick, Chris Rock, James Woods... could we at least make it a rule from now on that the only celebrities allowed to do voice acting are the ones that are genuinely nice people? Please?

Remember when Chris Rock claimed that voice acting was easy at the 2011 Academy
Awards? Yeah...

Oh, but I can hear the arguments right now... "But celebrities are needed for a movie to be successful! They go on talk shows to promote the movie and draw in people who are fans of them!" This is the most common justification I see for stunt-casting in animated movies. To which I say...

Reason #7: The "If We Have Celebrities Voicing the Characters in This Movie, It Will Automatically Be Successful at the Box Office!" Mindset is Bullcrap

First of all, I sincerely doubt that anyone is going to go see an animated movie or watch a cartoon show JUST BECAUSE a celebrity they like is in it. I like Jim Parsons, but his being in Home wasn't enough to make me go see THAT.

I know this movie still made a lot of money at the box office in
spite of my not going to see it. I sincerely doubt most of the folks
who DID go to see it did so because Rihanna and Jennifer Lopez
were in it.

Second of all, NO. Celebrities lending their voices to a movie does not automatically mean it's gonna make mucho moolah. Allow me to name several animated films, including ones that I went to see in theaters and actually liked, that are proof of that:

- Strange World (2022) - Featured the voices of Jake Gyllenhaal, Lucy Liu, Gabrielle Union, and Dennis Quaid. Was still a box office bomb.
- Lightyear (2022) - Featured the voices of Chris Evans, Keke Palmer, Uzo Aduba, and Taika Waititi. Was still a box office bomb.
- Legends of Oz: Dorothy's Return (2014) - Featured the voices of Lea Michele, Kelsey Grammer, Martin Short, Dan Aykroyd, Oliver Platt, Jim Belushi, and Patrick Stewart. Was still a box office bomb
- Rise of the Guardians (2012) - Featured the voices of Chris Pine, Alec Baldwin, Hugh Jacckman, Jude Law, and Isla Fisher. Was still a box office bomb.
- The Ant Bully (2006) - Featured the voices of Nicolas Cage, Bruce Campbell, Regina King, Julia Roberts, Meryl Streep, Paul Giamatti, and Lily Tomlin. Was still a box office bomb.
- Arctic Dogs (2019) - Featured the voices of Jeremy Renner, Heidi Klum, John Cleese, Alec Baldwin, and Anjelica Hudson. Was still an enormous box office bomb.
- Turbo (2013) - Featured the voices of Ryan Reynolds, Paul Giamatti, Maya Rudolph, Samuel L. Jackson, Snoop Dogg (or Snoop Lion or whatever his name is right now), Bill Hader, Ken Jeong, and Michelle Rodriguez. Was still a box office bomb.
- Mr. Peabody and Sherman (2014) - Featured the voices of Ty Burrell, Allison Janney, Stanley Tucci, Stephen Colbert, Leslie Mann, and Lake Bell. Was still a box office bomb.
- Penguins of Madagascar (2014) - Featured the voices of John Malkovich, Benedict Cumberbatch, Ken Jeong, and Peter Stormare. Was still a box office bomb (and no, it wouldn't have been more successful if the main four penguins had been voiced by celebrities instead of DreamWorks employees).
- Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas (2003) - Featured the voices of Brad Pitt, Catherine Zeta-Jones, and Michelle Pfieffer. Was still a box office bomb.
- Osmosis Jones (2001) - Featured the voices of Chris Rock, David Hyde Pierce, Laurence Fishburne, and Brandy Norwood. Was still a box office bomb.
- Strange Magic (2015) - Featured the voices of Evan Rachel Wood, Alfred Molina, Maya Rudolph, Kristin Chenoweth, Alan Cumming, and Elijah Kelley. Was still a box office bomb.
- UglyDolls (2019) - Featured a ton of celebrities: Kelly Clarkson, Janelle Monae, Nick Jonas, Pitbull, Wanda Sykes, Blake Shelton, Gabriel Iglesias, Lizzo, Ice T, Bebe Rexha, Jane Lynch, Rob Riggle, and Emma Roberts. Was still a box office bomb.
- Norm of the North (2016) - Featured the voices of Rob Schneider, Ken Jeong, Bill Nighy, and Gabriel Iglesias. Was still a box office bomb.
- Titan AE (2000) - Featured the voices of Matt Damon, Drew Barrymore, Nathan Lane, John Leguizamo, and Janeane Garofalo. Was still a box office bomb.
- Delgo (2008) - Featured the voices of Freddie Prince Jr., Jennifer Love Hewitt, Chris Kattan, Val Kilmer, Malcolm McDowell, Michael Clarke Duncan, Burt Reynolds, Kelly Ripa, and Eric Idle (who I really hope fired his agent afterwards). Was still an enormous box office bomb.

STUDIO EXECUTIVES: "Kelly Clarkson is Moxy!"

WORLD: "Meh, the film still looks lousy."

I'm obviously not saying that those movies flopped BECAUSE they had celebrity voices (in Delgo's case, I bet most people looked at the ugly character designs and went "No thank you"), but they prove that celebrity voices do not equal box office success. Much in the same way, I sincerely doubt anyone watched any episode of The Lion Guard because Rob Lowe and Gabrielle Union were voicing characters in it. Father of the Pride's countless celebrity voices couldn't save that show from being a flop (and hey, both shows are about lions. That's kind of interesting).

"But wait!" you insist. "There are lots of animated movies that DID have celebrity voices in them but were still really successful!" And, yeah, there are. But what about The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie? It had mostly professional voice actors in it (I say "mostly" because Jeffrey Tambor, Scarlett Johannson, and Alec Baldwin voiced characters as well) and did fine at the box office. Or Space Jam? That was almost all professional voice actors for the animated characters - the only celebrity was Danny DeVito. And yet that was a box office hit. And there's also Barnyard: yes, it had some celebrities, but it also had a lot of professional voice actors like Rob Paulsen, Cam Clarke, and Maurice LaMarche as well. That movie did decently. Hmmm, could this mean that movies with professional voice actors lending their voices to them DO have a chance of being box office successes?

And, finally, perhaps the most important reason of all...

Reason #8: It Contributes to the Amount of Disrespect That the Higher-Ups in the Entertainment Industry Have For Professional Voice Actors

Yeah, this is what REALLY bothers me. Professional voice actors get no respect. Hollywood executives seem to have this idea that voice acting is easy and that professional voice actors aren't "real" actors. And I'm fully convinced that the "voice acting is easy" mindset is at least partly the fault of celebrities dominating voice acting - people see celebrities who aren't even actors like Beyonce and Cee-Lo Green doing it and think "Well, if THEY can do it, it must be easy!".

The disrespect that voice actors receive is incredibly frustrating. I've told this story before, but Billy West once said in an interview that he and the other voice actors in Space Jam weren't invited to the Grauman's Chinese Theater for the film's premiere, instead being invited to the smaller one next door. When Bob Bergen called up whoever it was that was in charge of that, they told him that the big party at the Chinese Theater was "for the actors" (apparently Michael Jordan qualifies as an "actor" but Bob Bergen doesn't? Does that sound fair to you?) - and apparently all the "actors" in Space Jam couldn't even fill that theater, and so the seats that could've been occupied by the voice actors were filled by people who had nothing to do with the movie and were only there because they were famous. And that's just one example!

If you're a professional voice actor, even if you originated the character or have been voicing them for years, the higher-ups will gleefully replace you either because they want celebrities to voice all the characters (the surviving cast of DuckTales in the reboot, Frank Welker as Fred and Grey DeLisle-Griffin in Scoob!), because they think you've gotten too old (Paul Winchell for Tigger, Paige O'Hara for Belle), or just for the heck of it (Cathy Cavadini, Tara Strong, and E.G. Daily in the Powerpuff Girls reboot). Going back to Space Jam, Bob Bergen went up to Joe Pytka, the director of the movie, at the premiere, introduced himself, and explained that he voiced several of the characters in the movie. Joe's response was "What do you want? A medal?", which, I'm sorry, is an incredibly rude thing to say. 20th Century Fox has made attempts to replace the voice actors for The Simpsons and Futurama simply because they "could not meet their salary demands" (how much money does Fox make each year?) - and then they did it AGAIN when they decided to bring the show back, attempting to ditch John DiMaggio as Bender so they could have a different celebrity voice Bender in every episode (which fortunately was settled). How about the Disney Legends awards*? Why haven't Jim Cummings, Tress MacNeille, Corey Burton, and Frank Welker been given the award yet but Christina Aguilera, Anthony Anderson, Patrick Dempsey, Ellen Pompeo, and Tracee Ellis Ross have? Corey Burton does tons of work for Disney but isn't considered a legend, but Anthony Anderson gets one just for starring in Black-ish? Oh, yeah, because when I think of Disney, Black-ish is one of the first things that comes to mind!

Do you have any idea how frustrated I was to learn that Disney once made the attempt to replace Jim Cummings as Winnie the Pooh with Bobby Moynihan of all people? Or how about when A Goofy Movie was in production and the higher-ups at Disney wanted to replace Bill Farmer as Goofy with Steve Martin for some inexplicable reason? Thankfully, no one else involved in production wanted that, but I guarantee you that if A Goofy Movie were made today, they would indeed replace Bill as Goofy with a celebrity. Maybe Chris Pratt or something...

Nothing against Chris Pratt, he's a good actor and all, but he should not be voicing Garfield.

So there we go. I have just listed every reason why we complain when a celebrity is announced as starring in an animated movie or TV show (I love how these companies still make such a huge deal out of it... the novelty, if there was any to begin with, has completely worn off). And yet this trend just won't stop. Will it EVER stop? I doubt it - at some point in April, it was announced that Rihanna, Nick Offerman, James Corden, and Amy Sedaris were all lending their voices to the next Smurfs movie - but it'd be nice if companies became more open to giving professional voice actors a chance. I think more animated movies should do what Barnyard did and have, like, three or four celebrities, and everyone else voiced by a professional voice actor. That way you still have your precious celebrities who go on talk shows and do interviews hyping up the movie and you have professional voice actors giving great performances instead of Maya Rudolph and Flula Borg or whoever acting obnoxious into a microphone.

Not every celebrity is Robin Williams, Jerry Orbach, or Martin Short.

* To be fair, there are a couple of voice actors who HAVE been named Disney Legends... specifically, Wayne Allwine, Russi Taylor, Bill Farmer, Tony Anselmo, Kathryn Beaumont, and Jodi Benson. Still, Anthony Anderson gets one before Corey Burton? That seems unfair to me.