Meet The International Voice-Over Superstars
The faces of Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts are known the world over. Their voices aren't. In many countries, their films are are dubbed rather than subtitled -- and there's an elite class of voice-over actors in Europe and Asia who handle the starring roles. The Guardian has interviews with several of them -- I wish they'd included audio clips so we could hear how the Angelina Jolie of France sounds.
Sometimes the international voice-casting is pitch perfect. When THE TERMINATOR first came out, the first chance I had to see it was in Germany--in German. I was sure that the distinctive voice of the Terminator belonged to the same guy who played CONAN THE BARBARIAN--but when I had the chance to ask, years later, James Cameron was pretty sure that Arnold Schwarzennegger hadn't had been available to dub his own role in his native tongue.
The dubbing of the smaller roles, though, was bizarre: the police station banter between Lance Henriksen and Paul Winfield was performed as if it were a scene in LA CAGE AUX FOLLES. Twisted.