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    "If we had some sort of machine which could imitate any voice, we'd only need one voice actor."

    "We do; it's called 'Billy West'."

    Voice Actors known for a wide range of voices, and therefore voicing Loads and Loads of Characters. Basically if you can't say "Hey, It's That Voice!", odds are, it was one of these people. Fact is, the industry is incredibly small, and there just aren't enough actors to cover all the exponentially increasing amount of characters and projects created each year. Being versatile is required.

    Bonus points if the actor is able to avert Larynx Dissonance and Not Even Bothering with the Accent, but it's not vital.

    Name comes from a nickname given to Mel Blanc, who was responsible for nearly every classic Looney Tunes male character.

    Can overlap with Talking to Himself, if the actor does multiple roles on the same show.

    Interestingly enough, the vast majority of voice actors and vocal work don't create "voices" but is largely using their own natural voice with slight tonal changes, pitched up or down. Thus it is still possible for a Pigeonholed Voice Actor to ironically also have "a thousand voices," just people aren't aware of their versatility.

    Not to be confused with Voice of the Legion.

    Just choose a few key roles to give an idea of the actors' ranges. Save large lists for their own pages.

    English

    • In the industry, Frank Welker is known as the real king of this—just check his IMDB filmography. It's easier to list what he hasn't done than to try and list everything he's worked on. (Incidentally, a joint venture search on IMDB between Mel Blanc and Frank Welker shows they've shared credits 22 times.)
      • He even came close to voicing Scrappy Doo.[1]
      • The Futurama cast and crew used Frank to do most animal voices on the show, and often commented on their awe of his ability to portray, in a single take, an entire flock of geese.
        • Apparently, Welker is so good at doing animal sounds that some studios hire him just to do that. Chances are, if you're watching a cartoon and there's an animal in it that makes a sound it's Welker.
        • Welker once appeared on Manny The Uncanny and did a capuchin monkey distress call. And he got a reaction from actual capuchin monkeys. That's how good the guy is.
        • For these reasons he's one of the highest grossing film actors of all time by a margin of just under a billion US dollars (albeit not adjusted for inflation). Impressive.
      • In an interview with a voice actor on a Transformers DVD (he was the voice of Megatron and Soundwave, among others), he says that Welker could perform a call on a pay phone—the coin dropping in the slot, the ringing, the operator, and both sides of the conversation—with ease.
        • Here's a scene from an early episode of the original series. Except for Thundercracker (voiced by John Stephenson), every single character is voiced by Welker, including one scene where he's essentially throttling himself. Outside of that scene, Starscream (Chris Latta) is the only Season One Decepticon not voiced by Welker.
    • Abridged Series have shown this cool trait can be more common than we thought. It's not universal, but still all over the place.
    • Charlie Adler is apparently just as proficient at playing young boys (and even girls!) as he is at playing burly, arrogant, older men.
    • Several FUNimation voice actors:
    • Trey Parker and Matt Stone are known to voice every male characters in South Park (with a few exceptions), as well as pretty much every overdubbed voice in their movies. Interestingly, the results vary between Man of a Thousand Voices and Hey, It's That Voice!, since although they are both capable of performing very different voices, they sometimes don't even bother trying. Keep in mind most of the characters are 9-10 year old children.
    • Yuri Lowenthal. You may think he's typecast into the Kid Hero characters like Ben Tennyson, Simon, and Yuri Shibuya. However, he's quite capable of doing accents. Compare his Persian accent with the Prince; a British accent for Cornelius, Advocat, Future!Luke; and a French accent for Pip Bernadotte. It should noted that he's a polyglot in real life, which can easily explain this.
    • Michael Bell. Lampshaded in the Soul Reaver 2 outtakes where Rene Auberjonois describes Michael as "The man of many voice." to which Michael responds "I'm the man of one voice you just think its a thousand."
    • Jeff Bennett. An extreme case is The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack, in which he plays nearly every character other than the Three Amigos.
    • Mel Blanc. Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Sylvester T. Cat, Tweety Bird, Pepe Le Pew, Speedy Gonzales... do I really need to continue?
    • Steven Blum. Too many examples to list. If you watch anime dubs, it's almost impossible to not hear his voice at least once in your life.
      • Some examples: Orochimaru and Zabuza from Naruto, Jamie from Megas XLR, Spike Spiegel from Cowboy Bebop, Yakky Doodle in Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law, Blunk from WITCH
      • And then he gave us Leeron from Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann. This is nothing short of impressive, and he does an almost creepishly good job out of it.
      • He also voices Yamaki and, to the surprise of many, Guilmon from Digimon Tamers.
      • Sometimes, he does do cartoon voices as well. Just as an example, prior to voicing Leeron, he voiced Smytus from My Life as a Teenage Robot, destroyer of worlds!]]
      • And how could anyone forget Tom from Toonami.
      • What's amazing is, many people know him for the Roger Smith/Yamaki voice (add a little growl and you get Black War Greymon) and think it's all he can do. It's... so not.
      • The Green Goblin, anyone?
      • He's Wolverine in every non-movie version since X-men Legends.
      • And Oghren from Dragon Age.
        • Not to mention he also voiced First Enchanter Irving AND Gorim (from the Noble Dwarf Origin). That's three developed/named characters in the same game.
        • Maybe Oghren's looking for the Milkman?
      • Grunt in Mass Effect 2.
      • Starscream.
    • Daws Butler:
    • Matt Chapman, one of the co-creators of Homestar Runner, manages to voice almost all the characters for the site. It's easier to list who he does not voice (Marzipan, voiced by his sister-in-law, Missy Palmer, the Poopsmith's singing voice by John Linnel of They Might Be Giants, and the characters as portrayed in the Cheat's flash cartoons by Matt's brother Mike).
      • It's especially impressive when one of his characters impersonates another and you can tell which is impersonating which.
    • Cam Clarke is one of these. Just a few of his varied roles include:
    • Jim Cummings
    • Jim Dale, the reader for the U.S. audiobook editions of the Harry Potter books. He won an award for managing to come up with a few hundred unique character voices for Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.
    • June Foray. She's been doing voice work steadily since 1943. Chuck Jones said of her: "June Foray is not the female Mel Blanc. Mel Blanc is the male June Foray."
    • Paul Frees
    • Michael Winslow is a special case, in which he doesn't do only voices, but sound effects as well. His appearances in Police Academy are just a showcase: watch him perform Led Zeppelin's "Whole Lotta Love".
    • On The Simpsons alone, Dan Castellaneta, Harry Shearer and Hank Azaria fit this trope.
      • Dan's range in particular made him a good choice to replace Robin Williams as the voice of the Genie in the sequel and TV spinoff of Aladdin.
        • A good choice in the sense that he could sound like like Robin Williams. Unfortunately, he hae none of Williams' humor or spontaneity resulting in a very dull genie character who only happened to sound like Robin Williams.
    • Tom Kenny was once actually called this at a Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards show, where he served as an announcer. He's worked as a main or supporting character on just about every animated series to ever come out of Nickelodeon or Cartoon Network.
      • One notable example is Transformers Animated, where he not only voices Starscream, but also half a dozen of his clones, each with their own personality quirk. (Slipstream, the female clone, is played by Tara Strong, who is also on this page.)
    • Seth MacFarlane, who voices pretty much all the major male characters in Family Guy, and two of the main characters in American Dad. Just... see this Hulu commercial. He can also sing in all of his voices.
    • While many people don't realize it due to his baritone voice relating to badasses, Crispin Freeman has a very wide vocal range. Compare Kyon, Orange, Hideki, Koichi, Alucard, and Shizuo.
    • Tress MacNeille , Kath Soucie, Grey DeLisle and Tara Strong. Basically any American cartoon will have one of these four voices in it at some point. If a character is female and in an American cartoon, it's one of them. (Unless she's Asian, in which case it's Lauren Tom, or if black, Cree Summer.)
    • While the characters Grey DeLisle's put in are very much pigeonholed, her range is anything but. Rarely do any of her voices sound alike (except when they scream). Sam sounds nothing like Mandy who sounds nothing like Frankie or Vicky (or the other Vicky).
      • An extreme case is Dan Vs., where Grey voices nearly every minor female character and nearly every child.
      • The comparison that breaks brains: Grey DeLisle has voiced both Azula and Tootie. How more varied can you get?
    • Tara Strong has been heard as 10 year old boy Timmy Turner, gothic superheroine Raven Teen Titans as well as the minor character Kitten, Twilight Sparkle in My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic, Genki Girl Rikku in Final Fantasy X, split-personalitied Dark Magical Girl Elisa/Ursula in Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops, Ben Tennyson on Ben 10, Presea on Tales of Symphonia, both Toot Braunstein and Princess Clara on Drawn Together, Truffles and additional voices in Chowder, and even Batgirl. She's possibly best known as Bubbles from The Powerpuff Girls. Despite voice acting not typically being a very lucrative career, she's done so many voices that she's able to afford a large house in Los Angeles (as seen on Take Home Chef).
    • Scott McNeil, who has gone from #1 mutant BadAss to mysteriously wise yet absent father to a sleazy strip club owner and a devout Muslim fundamentalist (both characters in the same series) to robotic butt monkey to robot deadpan snarker to one half of a quirky duo of minions, to a METAL BAWKSE crazed psychopath.
      • To elaborate on the Beast Wars example, he voiced Dinobot and Rattrap, who feuded constantly throughout the series, so he's arguing with himself for about five minutes in just about every season one and two episode. He also played the ridiculously noble Silverbolt and the Ensemble Darkhorse Waspinator.
    • Julie McWhirter
    • Don Messick
    • Opera-singer Marni Nixon, who was known among Hollywood insiders for her talent at "ghosting" other actress' voices, often was left uncredited. In particular, she sang for:
    • Rob Paulsen has a voice credit list a mile long, but Raphael sounds nothing like Yakko Warner or Pinky, who sounds nothing like Jack Fenton, who sounds nothing like Saber Rider, who sounds nothing like Sal Maroni. The Maroni voice does sound like a deeper, scarier, and slightly Brooklyn version of Technus, though.
      • And Anomen sounds nothing like those characters listed above.
      • His normal voice sounds rather like Raphael.
      • He also plays as Cyborg Ninja/Grey Fox in the Metal Gear Solid remake The Twin Snakes.
        • Many of his characters are recognizable by their smart aleck attitude. Well, except for the gun crazy, time-traveling, macho redneck, Officer Buck Tuddrussel...
    • Pat Fraley has one of the longest credit lists ever, and he is so proficient in voice acting that he beat out several talented nominees like Bob Bergen for the voice over lifetime achievement, which takes at least 25 years or more to be nominated for. Considering that he did the voices for Krang, General Traag, Baxter Stockman, Burne Thompson and many other characters all on the same show, and sometimes in the same scenes, his award was definitely earned with his vast talent.
    • Although not yet prolific as such, Michelle Ruff has admirable range and completely avoids pigeonholing herself. Among others, she does the deliciously snarky Etna, the Kuudere Avril, serious noble Rukia, the emotionless Yuki, the ditzy Tsukasa, and nervous heroine Alicia.
    • Beyond cartoons, Peter Sellers' initial fame as a radio performer was built on this, whether he was doing celebrity impersonations or character roles. In The Goon Show—where everyone voiced multiple roles, major and minor—he voiced Major Bloodnok, Bluebottle, Hercules Grytpype-Thynne and Henry Crun out of the major characters alone. Sellers could also substitute for absent performers and their characters as needed. When Spike Milligan - who had roughly as many characters as Sellers - was absent, Sellers could do all of them himself. When he was absent, four performers had to be brought in to substitute for all his roles.
      • Truth in Television; Michael Bentine, his colleague on The Goon Show, complained that after speaking to Sellers for a while, you would find him speaking to you in your own voice, completely unconsciously, and would only stop if this was pointed out to him.
    • John Stephenson
    • Leonard Weinrib of Inch High Private Eye and DFE's Roland and Rattfink.
    • Put Billy West in a room, give him a script and a mike and you can do a complete show with 20+ individual voices. In Futurama alone he was the Professor, Fry, Zoidberg, Zapp Brannigan, Nixon and half of any background/supporting characters you see. And all of this after he first came to public attention as the voice of both Ren and Stimpy after John Kricfalusi had to give up the role of Ren when he got fired.
      • Billy West seemed to have actively set out to become one, claiming to have been heavily influenced by Mel Blanc, Dawes Butler and Don Messick.
      • Also notable is that his already impressive range also includes voices that you could swear they were digitally edited, like a semi-reccuring Energy Being from Futurama. But nope, that flangy alien voice is all from Billy's mouth.
    • Like Billy West above, John Dimaggio has developed a wide range of voices himself. From robots to psychotic penguins, mad scientists and bikers to aliens, even annoying Talking Animal sidekicks, this dude has been around the curve more than once.
      • He's also grizzled space marine Marcus Fenix and a talented beatboxer. Anytime there's beatboxing done on Futurama', it's all him.
      • He was the voice of Hak Foo in Jackie Chan Adventures, replacing Jim Cummings from the second season on. And you can hardly tell the difference.
    • Maurice LaMarche as well. Most of Futurama's aliens are voiced by Maurice (Kif, Morbo, Lrrr, etc.) as are a few robots (Calculon, Hedonism-bot) and a kick-ass narrator ("You watched it! You can't un-watch it!")
      • He's also The Brain. Basically, the man does the greatest Orson Welles impersonation of all time.
      • Similar to the Michael Bell joke above, LaMarche has admitted on one Futurama commentary that Lrr, Morbo and the Horrible Gelatinous Blob are all the same voice.
        • MORBO MOCKS YOUR TROPE ANALYSIS!
      • In one episode of The Critic, he did 29 different characters. It's a 22 minute show.
    • All three Futurama voice actors mentioned above have referred to fellow voice (and live action) actor Dave Herman as one of these as well. In addition to providing the voices of recurring characters like Scruffy, Roberto, and Mayor Poopenmeyer, he's often the "go-to" guy for incidental and secondary characters. Billy West in particular has praised him for being able to create unique and often hilarious voices for characters that only appear for a few seconds of screen time.
    • Paul Winchell, both as a ventriloquist and as a cartoon voice actor.
    • Watch the Bleach dub. You won't even tell that Yoruichi, Tatsuki, and Ururu all have the same voice.
    • Phil LaMarr voices just about every black character in western animation, in addition to a variety of other roles.
    • Jennifer Hale. She does so many voices that nearly every show she appears in features her talking to herself. Despite being pigeonholed in Videogame Voice Acting, she has a much wider range of roles in animation, from Action Girls to villainous children, to even Cinderella.
    • There's a lady who voices over a hundred talking household items in Blue's Clues. She holds the world record for the most voices ever done in a single TV show.
    • On YouTube, there's Jared a.k.a The Man of 100 Voices, in which he did exactly 100 voices in around 4 minutes and 2 seconds. Later, his record was best by Brock "McGoiter" Baker- who's also made dozens of other funny videos showing his impressive range- by over 10 seconds plus one extra voice. And then, of course- The Man of One Million Voices. Some of those voices were better than others, though that's to be expected.
    • Corey Burton, most famous for Brainiac from Superman: The Animated Series (and Justice League, and Legion of Super-Heroes) but also frequently various Transformers.
    • Egoraptor (Arin Hanson) and Tomamoto (Joshua Tomar) are well-known voice actors on the Internet, particularly on Newgrounds. Egoraptor is most famous for his "Awesome" Shorts, and Tomamoto is known for his Fandubs, both of which showcase their ridiculous range.
      • In the Newgrounds series the Decline of Videogaming, Egoraptor voices all three of the Evil Developers and Shigeru Miyamoto... all of whom have different voice pitch and word pronunciation. They don't sound alike at all.
      • This is turned Up to Eleven when Arin voiced Kanji Tatsumi, who's heavily implied to be gay, in the Persona 4 Hiimdaisy Comic Dub. The group goes to save Kanji in the TV, and when they find him they see his Shadow Self, who says in a stereotypical gay man's voice, "I'm Kanji Tatsumi and I enjoy naked men. Oh yeah~". Seriously, you wouldn't even know it was him.
    • The creators of The Venture Bros, Doc Hammer and Jackson Publick, in addition to doing all the writing, concept art, and most of the producing/directing, also do the voices of a ridiculous amount of characters in-show, from main characters to bit pieces. A bit less range than some of the names here, but if you do 90% of the voice acting on one show, you deserve to be here.
      • Publick deserves special mention - he voices fifteen characters on his own and does most of the Talking to Himself sequences.
    • Bob Bergen. Has voiced Lupin III, Porky Pig and other Looney Tunes characters on a number of occasions, and is Lucas Arts' choice of voice actor for Luke Skywalker.
    • Lorne Lanning, creator of the Oddworld series, is the voice of every Player Character and most NPC's.
    • Dee Bradley Baker. Pretty much anything non-human in any American animation will be voiced by him (for example, the monsters in Ben 10, Perry of Phineas and Ferb, and Appa and Momo of Avatar: The Last Airbender). He has also voiced numerous minor human characters, such as about ten different characters in SpongeBob SquarePants and The Fairly OddParents.
    • Itsjustsomerandomguy, creator of I'm a Marvel And I'm a DC. Besides doing all the male voices on the series, his Blog TV conferences have featured him showing off some more of his range, like almost all of the Muppets.
    • Mark Hamill. When your two most famous roles are Luke Skywalker and the frikkin Joker. you know you're an all-around versatile actor. Also, check out this clip of him appearing on The Muppet Show; he imitates both Kermit the Frog and Fozzie Bear near-perfectly. And to think the guy's been typecast as villains in most of his career.
    • Robin Williams in his groundbreaking role as the Genie in Aladdin. Anybody got a complete list of all the impersonations and accents he does?
    • Linkara. In a typical review he'll have about four or five voices for narrating the comic, himself, and then an appearance from one of his other four characters.
      • While we're on about Channel Awesome, Doug Walker himself. He can pull off a naive child, women, ALF, an opera singer, and a baritone British villain, all in one review! It's even more impressive when his face is off-screen or over another character!
      • Benzaie. Watch any of his "Let's Fap" videos; you don't know funny until you've heard Kermit the Frog recite Hentai dialogue.
    • James Arnold Taylor is well known to have large flexibility in voice acting. He voice acting ranges from Keet Tidus from Final Fantasy X to Ratchet from Ratchet and Clank, Obi-Wan Kenobi from Star Wars: Clone Wars, Green Arrow from Batman the Brave And The Bold, the titular character of Johnny Test, and Wooldoor Sockbat from Drawn Together. He's a man of thousands of voices, and makes you wonder why his Anime roles are very small and limited. Listen for yourself to believe it!
    • Oddly enough, Ben Affleck. He has a habit of impersonating one of his co-stars in every movie he does, and some of them say it's freaky how good he is. Just as an example, on the set of The Sum of All Fears, he did his impression of Morgan Freeman for Freeman himself, whose response was, "You ever do that again, I'll kill you."
    • On radio, Bob & Ray fit this trope perfectly between them, double-handedly maintaining the illusion of a large supporting 'cast' (male and female) plus endless one-shot guest-stars.
    • Check the credits of any UK/Canadian children's series with a female or little boy character; chances are s/he's being voiced by Maria Darling.
    • Chances are, if you play a video game, Nolan North is in it. He's even played black guys at times.
    • Eddie Murphy. See Coming to America and The Nutty Professor for an idea.
    • Despite his range going from sweet and innocent to rough and serious characters, Will Friedle has played a good number of roles himself. Some of his characters even play homage to his other roles.
    • Chester Lauck and Norris Goff voiced almost every single male character in Lum and Abner. The only exceptions in the recurring cast were The Narrator and Dr. Withers.
    • Somehow Tony Oliver can voice Lupin III, Lancer, Bat from the Fist of the North Star movie, and Keiichi from the Ah! My Goddess! movie in English and they don't sound one damn bit alike.
    • Every character Kari Wahlgren has done has a completely distinct voice. Seriously, compare Fuu to Raine or Anemone. Even the characters that are relatively similar sound completely different, such as her Jeanne and her Ashe.
    • Daran Norris has played both the wicked Vincent from the Cowboy Bebop movie and the idiotic Cosmo from Fairly Oddparents, as well as Spotswoode from Team America: World Police, Belze in God Hand, and Mad Scientist Rodyle in Tales of Symphonia.
    • Nicholas Briggs has played the voice of many different alien species since the 2005 revival of Doctor Who, inluding the Daleks (particularly notabe with The Cult of Skaro), Cybermen, Judoon and the Nestene Consciousness.
      • Nick Briggs does the CREEPIEST, most nightmare fuellish Dalek voice ever; Dalek Caan in Stolen Earth/Journeys End.

    [Caan *insane and giggly*] "I fleeeew into the wilds and fire! I danced and died a THOUSAND TIMES!"


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    1. ↑ before anyone freaks out at this, it was before Executive Meddling (in the form of The Complainer Is Always Wrong) turned that character into, well, The Scrappy
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