The Hollywood Byte #25: The Voice Actor

Actor Michael Bell has been voicing video game characters since the early days of the industry. Over his career, the 67 year-old actor has performed in 57 video games, including best-selling franchises like , Metal Gear Solid, Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver, , and Age of Empires.

"As an actor you don't pick and choose what's there," said Bell. "You take whatever comes along. I became what's known in the business as a voice slut. I'd do anything. I've even done groan-overs for Japanese adult films."

Bell said that in the early years, when he was first introduced to interactive entertainment, he had no idea what video games were. The first game he did voice work for was Ys: Book 1 and 2. And that just lead to one game after another. Before he knew it, by the beginning of this year he had voiced 57 games. I wound up doing all of this stuff and realized there was a major business here."

Michael Bell

Michael Bell on pen-and-paper gamers: "These are like people who live under the subway. I didn't know they even existed. It's fascinating to me."

Bell can currently be heard in a new movie about role-playing gamers, aptly titled, Gamers. The straight-to-DVD release was written and directed by THQ's head of video production, Chris Folino. The comedy chronicles a quartet of gamers attempt to break the world record for playing a pen-and-paper game for the most consecutive years.

When Folino brought Bell the script for Gamers, the actor was interested, but wanted to get a better feel for the RPG scene. Folino took him to a big game convention at a huge auditorium where there were hundreds of people playing pen-and-paper games. Many of the gamers were dressed in costumes.