#FanX17: Jennifer Hale discusses her voice-acting career

Salt Lake Comic Con FanX 2017 guest Jennifer Hale has been acting and voice-acting for nearly 30 years. Her staggering 348 IMDb credits date back to 1988 and include an impressive blend of television, film and video games. She is perhaps most widely recognized for lending her voice to the female version of Commander Shepard in the "Mass Effect" video game franchise, but has also acted as superheroes (in animated incarnations of "X-Men" and Marvel's Avengers, and as Captain Marvel in "Disney Infinity"), as princesses (she's been Cinderella quite a few times), as characters in "Halo" and "Star Wars" video games and - my personal favorite - as the dimension-hopping scientist Rosalind Lutece in "Bioshock Infinite," to name just a few of her many roles.

Hale brought her proverbial bag of tricks to Salt Lake City last weekend, where she appeared on several panels, including the fan-favorite "Twisted Toonz" panel, which you can watch in its entirety at the bottom of this post. But before all the craziness of the convention began, she appeared at the opening press conference, where I had a chance to chat with her about her career.

SotT: All right, Jennifer, tell me a little bit about your career and, also, have you ever been to Utah before?

JH: “This is my first time to Utah. It’s absolutely beautiful. I love it.”

SotT: It’s good weather this week. You picked a good week to come.

JH: “Oh, my gosh. Completely lucky. I love it. I’m primarily known for cartoons, video games, that kind of thing. I’ve been voice-acting for a long time. I’ve done, I think, around 190 video games now, and a lot of cartoon series. I don’t even know how many, but that’s what I do.”

SotT: What was the first voice that you ever did professionally? Do you remember the first job that you got?

JH: “Yes! The first job I got was at a production house called Babble Studios. It was a commercial… I don’t remember what it was for, but I was [in distinct voice] doing a valley girl, because that’s what I could do at the time…”

[INTERVIEW IS INTERRUPTED BY VOICE OVER PA SYSTEM]

SotT: Do you have a favorite voice or a go-to voice that you always do?

JH: “I don’t have a go-to. I have, like, a million things that I like to do. My favorite thing is to mix it up. [Deepens voice] I like to be everything from a superhero [changes to high-pitched voice] to a psycho! [Laughs]”

SotT: When did you realize that you could do different voices? Was that at a young age or was it when you were a little bit older?

JH: “No, I really didn’t think about it, honestly. I was working in a video production house… [A radio station] asked me to come next door to an audio studio and do a radio commercial, and I … didn’t even know you could get paid for that, and that blew my mind. Then I was fortunate enough, when I moved to L.A., my first job was a cartoon series, and I jumped in and learned from the best!”

SotT: What is one voice that you’ve never done that you’d like to do? Like, a dream role?

JH: “Anything Jess Harnell does. [Laughs]”

SotT: Good answer. Good answer.