In the good old days (the ones Grampa is always talking about on The Simpsons), there was a clear line separating actors who starred on stage and screen, and voice-over artists who made their bread and butter from audio books and games. The latter were the unsung and unseen stars of the then-modest video game industry (save for the occasional appearance from Malcolm McDowell or Mark Hamill, who were presumably cheap). Teenage boys would fantasize about meeting the real Jill Valentine from Resident Evil, naively deducing that such characters must be based on real people. They were scanned with a laser, surely...
Imagine their disappointment after frantic searches online only to find the woman who voiced Jill Valentine was a divorcee with a child, who probably looked more like Roseanne Barr than Sienna Guillory (who played Valentine in the movie Resident Evil: Apocalypse). Such is the success of the gaming industry that it is about to overtake movies in terms of annual profit, if it hasn't already, and this has led to studios having the money to offer popular movie and TV actors to star in their products.
Games are big business. New releases such as Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 have the sort of cast that most movies would be jealous of. There's George Takei from Star Trek (yes that really is him currently eating bugs in I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here), Tim Curry, Peter Stormare, Jonathan Pryce and J.K Simmons from Spiderman. You see the power a video game can command these days? So just what is it that attracts stars to work on games like these? Is it just the money or are they genuinely interested in trying something different? Just over ten years ago absolutely no actor worth his salt lent their name to a video game...
One of the first to put his feet firmly on gaming soil was Bruce Willis, who gave his likeness and voice not for any of the numerous Die Hard games but for a separate adventure altogether called Apocalypse. This 1998 Playstation hit saw Willis play Trey Kincaid, a former friend of evil mastermind The Reverend, and the only man who can stop the four horsemen of the apocalypse from destroying the world. Apocalypse was a roaring success, and no doubt paved the way for big name actors to plant their own seeds in this new arena.
The Grand Theft Auto series began with Z-list actors and worked their way up. In GTA 2 the biggest name involved was Scott Maslan (from The Bill and Eastenders), but as the series expanded, actors like Michael Madsen, Joe Pantoliano (Cypher in The Matrix) and Kyle MacLachlan were hired for GTA 3, while celebrities like Iggy Pop, Ricky Gervais (as himself, who else) and Juliette Lewis appeared in GTA 4 without batting an eyelid. Grand Theft Auto was such a part of the popular consciousness that it seemed anyone and everyone wanted a part in the game. GTA: San Andreas had Samuel L. Jackson, Peter Fonda and even James Woods! Who'll be in future installments? Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Meryl Streep, or maybe Julia Roberts?!
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