10 Notable Names With At Least One Recurring TV Voice Role

It's a shame, but there's a built-in disparity in prominence between voice actors and their counterparts in live-action television and film. Their profession has started to gain traction in recent years thanks in large part to some of the hardest workers in the recording booth, but the bottom line remains that the casual observer is more likely to be familiar with the work of Jim Carrey rather than Jim Cummings (even if both resumes are equally impressive).

Maybe it's because their voice roles of actors don't make their names as readily attachable as seeing their familiar face. It might be that animation still for some reason carries a stigma of being an inferior medium to live-action work.

As any fan of the work that goes into voice acting can tell you though, the latter has never been the case. The best outcomes are when a larger name crosses into the genre and is able to establish at least one role the fans love or, better still, when they discover their own love for voice work and make a new career of it.

Here, then, are ten highly recognisable names who have also managed to create at least one memorable voice role in the world of TV animation.

The downside to portraying an iconic character in film, television or both is that it can be difficult to escape the shadow and do anything else. When that shadow is Batman, it's best to take the approach of the actor who originally brought him to television and just roll with it.

For most, the name Adam West conjures images of a campy '60s television series riddled with gadgets and devices with Bat prefixes, one of the catchiest theme songs known to man and "Shark Repellent Bat Spray" a full decade before 'jumping the shark' was a thing. This is a fair, albeit incomplete assessment. Granted, West would unfortunately be typecast throughout his career outside vying for the role of James Bond in Diamonds Are Forever, but rather than surrender, he used the typecast to his advantage.

While his appearances over the next five decades might have been limited in scope, West was able to parlay his most famous role into a highly successful voice career. Aside from portraying and/or voicing the Caped Crusader and related roles for 51 years - including his final film outing in 2017's Batman vs. Two-Face - West brought life to characters spanning from Johnny Bravo to Spongebob Squarepants and everything in between.

As voice roles go, however, he'll undoubtedly be most celebrated as the delightfully unhinged Mayor of Quahog, Rhode Island on Family Guy. Show creator Seth MacFarlane deliberately went against typecast and helped West create what was often considered the funniest character on the show for 18 years.