Frank Welker Profile

Newsarama has written a profile on legendary "voice acting god" Frank Welker as part of the release of the cartoons on home video. Welker will also soon be seen on the big screen in flesh and blood playing the father of Matt Damon's character in the Informant. The actor has more than 600 credits to his name, often providing voices to some of the most famous icons in cartoons besides Megatron and Soundwave. He is also less known as pretty much "voicing" a substantial number of animal noises used in films. His roles include Scooby Doo, Fred Jones, Barney Rubble, Garfield, Curious George, and so many more. Below is sections of the profile, with the full article here.

“There’s many a time you have to audition hundreds of actors,” the former director [Eric Radomski] of “Batman: The Animated Series", "Spawn", "Xioalin Showdown” and “Scooby Doo: Get A Clue!” once quipped, “only to prove the only actor for the role is Frank Welker.”

“That is incredibly flattering and I love hearing it,” Welker said. “In a way it is a bit scary too. I hate missing opportunities to work with different directors. One thing that seems to surprise the studios is finding out later my willingness to audition. Under the right circumstances I actually enjoy it very much. If I can audition to picture on a sound stage it works so well for everybody. I can see what is needed and audition under fire in real time, meet the director and see if we both connect, and the studio can see and hear what they need to make their decision. But [that quote] makes me feel great.”

“[Megatron] would have to be at the top,” Welker admits. “Number one, is he is different than any of the other voices I have had the privilege of providing. Also, the fact that he has remained a fan favorite and caused a bit of controversy along the way qualifies him for my personal hall of fame. I think he and Soundwave have set themselves apart from the other robots in terms of sound identification and that makes me a proud papa.”

“I purposely set out to make [Megatron] standout,” says Welker. “I wanted him to be different than just having a big loud voice. There are too many good actors that would be doing that. Putting in the scratchy weird noises seemed to work and the producers never asked me to do anything different. That helped because it was a visceral reaction to what I saw and read about him and for me that tends to make for the best latitude in acting.

Oddly enough though, it shocks the heck out of him when he hears fans will spend literally over $1000 for an original Megatron action figure. “What!,” he exclaims. “Wow, I didn't know that. Really fantastic. I guess I won't be receiving one from Hasbro. It is very sad, but I have none. (Someone needs to give him Masterpiece Megatron - TFLive).

“I came in towards the end of [Revenge of the Fallen] which is typical of voice work,” says Welker. “I was able to see bits and pieces of the film to get an idea of the action. We laid down a bunch of different lines that they later could work with and sort of pick and choose which worked best. I was very happy that Michael felt foreign actors would have trouble with the Soundwave voice. I ended up working most of the foreign versions. That was extremely hard. It took me many hours to do the different languages. Soundwave in French is not to be believed.”