From the VGAs Red Carpet: Jennifer Hale
Voice actress Jennifer Hale is a veteran of the industry, playing tons of memorable roles from Bastila in Knights of the Old Republic to Samus Aran in Metroid Prime and the female Commander Shepard in the Mass Effect series. She stopped to chat with us for a bit as she walked down the red carpet at this weekend's VGAs, and shared a little bit about the characters she's played so far.
Commander Sheperd was an interesting character to play, just because she can be so different from player to player. "I rely a lot on my director, Ginny McSwain," said Hale. Of course there are the various lines to be said for the Renegade and Paragon branches, but because players can vary Hale's character's appearance so much, does she have a default in mind when portraying the voice? "No," she said. "Think about it -- you don't go through your life thinking about your appearance from the outside, except for getting dressed in the morning. Neither does she. She goes out into the world and she is who she is in the middle of her, and that's how she goes through the world."
Hale doesn't actually play many games ("I'm terrible at them," she laughs), but her favorite experiences are "when I have awesome directors and awesome scripts." Her favorite character in recent memory? Brutal Legend's Ophelia, opposite Jack Black. Because "it was Tim," she says. "It was Tim Schafer, and you cannot go wrong with Tim Schafer."
