Hades- Disney's Hercules
I think a lot of people already know about this one, but here is James Woods as Hades. Just think about that, you've got this ancient Greek God, God of the underworld, Hades to be exact. What kind of a voice would you look for?
During the audition process, the directors went through countless people just doing the same kind of voice you would expect the lord of the underworld to have; they cackled, they announced their evilness and lord of the underworld-ness and basically all did typical bad guy sounding voices. Then in comes James Woods: "Hey, I'm Hades, how you doing?"
Watch (01:18- 01:35) for more about Hades.
Eduardo- Foster's home for imaginary friends
Hola!
Tom Kenny, well known for voicing Spongebob Squarepants, is in everything, so obviously he's in this show too. Kenny plays Eduardo, a big furry brutish looking monster with a heart of gold who speaks Spanish.
Now it's clear what approach they were taking with Eduardo, the whole don't judge a book by it's cover thing, and what's interesting is that Kenny's interpretation of Eduardo probably enforces this message more effectively than the kind of voice the creators were actually looking for. The creators were looking for a kind of beautiful soft Spanish voice, but what Kenny gave them was what they described as "a Spanish cookie monster".
Kenny said it was a desperate audition and when leaving he really didn't think it was going to lead anywhere, but the creators thought it was hilarious and took this new version of Eduardo's voice as the perfect fit.
Watch (03:48- 04:18) for more about Eduardo.
Grim- The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy
The situation with casting Grim must have been much the same as with casting Hades. If you're looking for a voice for the grim reaper, you're gonna get a lot of the same thing; big maniacal laughs and evilness boasting. Greg Eagles came in to the audition and did just that and put on a deep evil sounding voice. Believe it or not the creators were actually looking for something more shrill and whiny and for some reason British. To give Eagles a chance the creators asked if he could do more with the voice he chose, to which he added that awesome Jamaican accent. The video didn't embed, so here's a link:
Watch (01:00- 02:01) for more about Grim.
I think choosing Greg Eagles was a great decision, I can't imagine Grim without his accent, and that deep booming laughter that he does so well would probably be annoying if it were higher pitched and ridiculously British...
Rumpelstiltskin- Shrek 4
Walt Dohrn, the voice of Rumpelstiltskin, never actually auditioned for his role. Dohrn worked on the scratch track of Shrek 4, basically the early recordings of lines (not done by the actors) along with the storyboard, and he often put on the character voices whilst reading the lines. Rumpelstiltskin did not yet have an actor and as Dohrn worked more and more on the scratch track the creators began to really like his portrayal.
Watch (01:00- 01:38) for more about Rumpelstiltskin.
So Dohrn pretty much just became Rumpelstiltskin, they just liked his voice and after all his work on the scratch track it just fit the character.
Garfield- Garfield the movie
In "The Real Ghostbusters", Bill Murray's character from the movie is played by Lorenzo Music, the original voice of Garfield. Murray was said to have complained about Music's portrayal of his character sounding too much like Garfield. So supposedly years later Murray took on the role of Garfield as a joke and reference to all of this... I don't... I don't know...
The other reason I've come across is that one of the writers of the Garfield Movie script is called Joel Cohen and that Murray mistakenly thought the script was written by one of the Coen brothers (coen without a h ). So yeah, Murray misguidedly signed up to a project that he hated working on and sort of regretted it... but he came back for the sequel... meh.
