It’s kind of interesting to think of how one would get into voice acting and Dee Bradley Baker actually does manage to answer such questions on his website as he’s made quite a career out of lending his voice to many characters throughout the years. The number of different voices he’s managed to master and those that have lasted for years have been impressive, such as the goldfish on American Dad! and several characters for the Star Wars: Clone Wars saga. Having started in the early 90s he’s taken on a large number of roles and has a host of voices under his belt at this time. He even participated in Space Jam back in 1996 by voicing the parts of Daffy Duck and Taz, so saying that he’s gifted and skilled is still not quite enough to state just how great he’s been in his time behind the scenes. A lot of people don’t tend to give that much credit to voice actors unless they’re well-known and have been live action actors for a while that have been seen as outstanding names that people want to pay attention to. It’s safe to say that a wide majority of voice actors are those that people won’t ever really look into since they’re not typically seen to be as popular as those who act and can still lend their voices to various characters. Movies such as Kung Fu Panda, Megamind, and many others are good examples of this since said movies use a good number of celebrities that have established themselves as big names in live action before they went on to take voice roles for various movies.
Dee and many others like him are to be commended though since their tireless work in bringing us various animated characters is a great deal of fun since a lot of them tend to be different enough and unique in their own way to have a good time with. Coming up with each voice can’t always be easy since it begs the question as to how a voice actor knows which voice will be right for each given character. Then there’s the idea of how people will respond to it and will the voice work just fine for everyone, or will it be something that turns people off because there’s something that doesn’t work just right. It’s every bit as frustrating as live action sometimes since the voice actor really has to be on their game to give the audience a great presentation and not disappoint them. Thankfully though voice actors such as Dee do have support behind the scenes since nothing gets produced or pushed until it sounds just right and everyone is happy with the final product. Let’s be honest, a lot of us have likely watched an animated series in which the voice coming from a character really didn’t appear to fit that character’s appearance or mannerisms, and as a result the effort kind of flopped in a big way. Dan Balestrero of Backstage has more to offer on this topic.
Professionals such as Dee spend a lot of time coming up with voices and fine-tuning them to such a degree to make sure that they’ll work as required with the character they’ve been given. In this manner Dee and many others have managed to bring us quality entertainment and have created a legendary career for themselves in the process. As I mentioned above, a lot of folks won’t ever know or care enough about Dee’s career enough to seek him out and find out just how he does what he does. To some he’s just a voice, someone giving a bit of life to an animated character and nothing more. But really, without Dee or those like him some of the animated series a person sees wouldn’t be nearly as great or as funny since the right voice actor can make a huge difference in any project since they’re one of the reasons why animated shows and movies are as enjoyable as they are. It wouldn’t hurt to look these folks up now and again just to see how they go about their business and what they really go through in order to make the magic happen so to speak.
I could say that voice actors deserve a lot more credit than they get, and it would be true, but a lot of them are pretty well compensated for their time and their skill as Dee has a $6 million dollar net worth and is definitely comfortable in his position. Plus, the reputation he’s built up for himself isn’t bound to go anywhere that quickly since he’s still very, very good at what he does and is still fully capable of belting out one voice or another when he needs to. But all the same, it’s enough to want to give up for voice actors like Dee since he’s been rocking it for so long and he’s still into what he does for living.
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