Ever heard a British voice actor in a TV ad or your kid’s favorite animated show and thought, “I know that voice! Who is it?”
Yep, We’ve all been there—losing sleep over it, and then randomly shouting out, “Jeremy Irons!” on a crowded bus.
The fact is, many British voice over artists such as these current top 10 UK voice actors have such distinct accents and styles, they’re instantly recognizable—even if their names slip your mind for a minute!
So, if you’re racking your brain trying to figure out whose voice you just heard in the latest Aardman movie or Nescafé ad, chances are it’s one of the artists we’ve highlighted below in our top 15 British voice actors of all time.
1. Sir David Attenborough
If you’ve ever tuned into a TV nature show, then you’ve likely heard the wise, warm words of Sir David Attenborough.
His elegant RP accent is arguably one of the most familiar voices to engage us through the small screen–and about natural history, no less.
Over his 70 years with the BBC, this broadcaster, biologist, and natural historian has voiced 100s of award-winning environmental programs including Life on Earth, The Blue Planet, and The Private Life of Plants.
With his calm soothing voice, he’s certainly one of the few people who’s ever made the possibility of a gorilla picking lint from your jacket appear less terrifying than it actually is.
2. Joanna Lumley
To people of a certain age, the absolutely fabulous Dame Joanna Lumley will always be “Purdey”.
To others, of course, she’s forever the incorrigible Patsy Stone.
But the ‘60s model and Bond Girl gained even more prominence as a voice actor in the 1990s when she became the voice UK AOL users heard when logging in and out of the website.
Since then, her smoky, upscale British accent has been used on dozens of TV ads, radio shows, and animated movies such as Tim Burton’s The Corpse Bride and James and the Giant Peach.
3. Gary Oldman
Having appeared in countless Hollywood blockbusters and rave TV shows, Gary Oldman is one of the most celebrated modern actors to come out of Old Blighty.
Known for his unforgettable villains —Drexl Spivey from True Romance, anyone? Or the ultimate villain, Count Dracula?—Oldman has also left his mark in the voiceover world.
He’s voiced iconic characters in animated hits like Kung Fu Panda 2 (where he took on the role of Lord Shen, another fabulous villain), A Christmas Carol, and Quest for Camelot.
Gamers will also recognize him as Ignitus in Spyro the Dragon, Lord Vortech in Lego Dimensions, and, of course, awesome badass Viktor Reznov in Call of Duty.
4. Angela Lansbury
With an Honorary Oscar, five Tony Awards, six Golden Globes, and an Olivier Award under her belt, it might seem strange that for some folk, Angela Lansbury is best remembered as the voice of Mrs Potts in Disney’s box-office-busting animated film Beauty and the Beast.
However, the English-born actress and musical legend who fled to Hollywood during WW2’s London Blitz made the mother of all teacups something special with her warm, nurturing voice and no-nonsense sensibilities.
Mrs Potts wasn’t the only animated movie Lansbury voiced for, however, which is one of the many reasons she features in our list of top 15 UK voice actors.
She also takes kudos for Mommy Fortuna in The Last Unicorn, Dowager Empress Marie Feodorovna in Fox’s Anastasia, and Mayor McGerkle in the 2018 version of Dr. Seuss’ holiday classic How the Grinch Stole Christmas.
In addition, she voiced big brand commercials such as Mastercard, Bufferin, and the Beatrix Potter Company.
And, if you heard any of those ads, I’m going to put you out of your misery now and tell you that, yes, she is also iconic sleuth Jessica Fletcher from Murder, She Wrote!
5. Benedict Cumberbatch
If we’re going to highlight The Grinch’s Mayor McGerkle, well, then, we really have to make mention of the Grinch himself.
Voiced by the incomparable Benedict Cumberbatch, the brooding, bitter, and scruffily cute green guy out of Whosville was given new life under Cumberbatch’s fabulous deep and sonorous vocals.
For some reason, when it comes to VOs, ‘Cumberbatch’ and ‘curmudgeonly’ go together like PB & J.
So even if playing it American, as he did with the Grinch and the creature in the recent Eric, or keeping it strictly RP like his VO for the villainous tiger Shere Khan in Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle, the enigmatic Agent Classified in Penguins of Madagascar, or the dragon Smaug in Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit, it’s hard to mistake the snooty and somewhat surly tones Cumberbatch is so famous for.
6. Peter Dickson
Peter Dickson might not be a household name in the league of Lumley, Lansbury, or Cumberbatch, but he’s certainly a voice you’ve heard in your home many, many times.
That’s because overthe last 40 years, this Northern Irish voice over artist has been the announcer behind some of Britain’s biggest TV shows, including The X Factor, Family Fortunes, and The Price is Right.
Starting his career at just 17 as the BBC’s youngest-ever TV news presenter, he later became an announcer on BBC Radio 2.
Since then, he’s been the promotions brand voice for BBC 1, Channel 4, Nickelodeon, and Cartoon Network, while also voicing radio promos for Downton Abbey and EuroMillions ads.
Dickson created and performed many of the characters on The Steve Wright show for BBC Radio 1, while in 2013 he also did what many thought they’d never live to see, and gave the British nation’s favorite glove puppet Sooty a voice for the first time in nearly 60 years.
7. Helen Mirren
Helen Mirren is a legend of screen and stage with a list of credits too long to mention.
But she’s also lent her rich but rather husky voice to several adverts (the hilarious Uber Eats ad, which she also stars in as herself, being one) as well as animated movies including The Snow Queen, Prince of Egypt, and, of course, as the strict Dean Hardscrabble in Pixar/Disney’s Monsters University.
In addition, the beloved British actor has taken on narrator duties on series and movies such as the laugh-out-loud When Nature Calls, Enemy of the Reich: Noor Inayat Khan Story, and, let’s not forget the 2023 summer smash, Greta Gerwig’s Barbie.
8. David Warner
Born in 1941, David Warner played a ton of different characters on stage, on TV, and in film, but soon became known for slightly kooky, slightly crazy characters.
However, while his face is familiar from having appeared in every popular show you can think of – Star Trek, Twin Peaks, Lois & Clark, Doctor Who, etc. – his voice is better known for the countless animated series and movies he featured in.
These include Iron Man, Spiderman, Freakazoid!, Batman Beyond, Men in Black: The Series, and countless BBC Radio dramas.
Warner who sadly passed away at the age of 80 in 2022, wasn’t slow to add video game VOs to his impressively endless resume either. He voiced roles in gamers’ favorites such as Fallout, Descent 3, Star Trek: Klingon Academy, Baldur’s Gate, and Baldur’s Gate II.
9. Valentine Dyall
Some voices just lend themselves to the dark arts, and that’s certainly the case with legendary TV, film, and voice actor Valentine Dyall.
Though he started his career on stage and screen in the 1930s, he’s best known for his radio work of the 1940s and ‘50s, specifically his role as ‘The Man in Black’.
This character was the narrator of BBC Radio’s long-running, super-successful horror series Appointment with Fear, introducing and wrapping up dramatizations of spooky stories by Edgar Allen Poe, Robert Louis Stevenson, Dorothy L. Sayers, and American detective fiction writer, John Dickinson Carr.
Dyall’s sinister-sounding vocals led him to be cast as the villain in various other radio play hits of the time and later in film and TV movies such as The Haunting, Strange Stories, and The City of the Dead.
10. Dervla Kirwan
While not actually British, Irish-born Dervla Kirwan moved to the UK when she was 16 years old to pursue an acting career.
She accomplished that with flying colors starring in several high-profile British TV series and films such as Ballykissangel, Hearts and Bones, and True Detective.
But the reason we’ve put her on our list of top 15 British voice actors has to do with the fact that she voiced one of the most successful British ad campaigns of all time.
Without Kirwan’s soft-spoken, sultry Irish brogue, would we have ever discovered the sensuous delight of a Marks & Spencer’s steamed pudding? Probably not.
And it’s likely the British high-street brand wouldn’t have had its puds achieve a record 3000% increase in sales that year either.
The iconic 2005 ad campaign that made food porn mainstream, ran for three years. By that time, however, it was firmly ensconced in British TV viewers’ collective memory, which is why it was brought back with equal success in 2019.
11. Ben Kingsley
Coming to international prominence for his Oscar-winning role as Mahatma Gandhi in Richard Attenborough’s 1982 movie, Gandhi, Sir Ben Kingsley has since worked on a slew of major Hollywood and British box office hits.
But alongside those films, he’s also voiced several animated movies, including Disney’s Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, Boxtrolls, for which he won an Annie Award for Best Male Lead Vocal Performance, and his latest outing alongside Mark Hamill and Pierce Brosnan, Mofac Animation’s King of Kings.
The Indian-British actor also brought wise old panther, Bagheera to life in Jon Favereau’s astonishing live-action adaptation of The Jungle Book in 2016, while his elegant voice can also be picked out on video games such as Fable III.
12. Minnie Driver
An actress whose credits include cult classic, Grosse Point and Gus Van Sant’s Good Will Hunting, Minnie Driver earned further kudos when she beautifully voiced the upper-crust Jane in Walt Disney’s 1999 hit, Tarzan.
Since then she’s gone on to feature in a roll-call of further major movies, TV series, and animated films and shows.
This latter list includes South Park: Bigger Longer & Uncut, Princess Mononoke, SuperMasion, Batman: Caped Crusader, and Revisioned; Tomb Raider.
Video games have also got a look in when it comes to Driver doling out voice duties as she’s voiced characters on Trespasser and Quest for Code.
13. Peter Sallis
Hold on tight lad, and think of Lancashire hotpot! Because this next VO star in our top 15 British voice actors of all time is a real (cheese) cracker.
OK, I’ll stop now. But it’s hard to introduce the instantly recognizable voice of Peter Sallis without making a few Wallace and Gromit references.
After all, Sallis, who first found fame in the 1960s British series, Dad’s Army, voiced the eponymous, cheese-loving Wallace since the time it was still creator Nick Park’s film-school project.
When Aardman Film’s A Grand Day Out, the first big adventure of cheery, clueless Lancashire man, Wallace, and his silent sidekick and pet dog, Gromit, was finally finished 6 years later, and transmitted on Channel 4 on Christmas Eve 1990, he took up VO duties again–and British animation history was made.
14. Jane Horrocks
Lancashire lass, Jane Horrocks is no stranger to voice over work.
While she rose to prominence courtesy of Mike Leigh’s 1998 film The Rise and Fall of Little Voice (which she’d already starred in on the stage), she’s also voiced several animated characters.
These include a knitting-loving chicken in 2000’s Chicken Run, a black widow spider, and Emily’s best bud’ in Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride and Fairy Mary in Tinker Bell and the Lost Treasure.
Many folks will recognize her as the character ‘Bubble’ in the long-running British television comedy series Absolutely Fabulous.
But her soft throaty, almost childlike accent has also seen her voice in several ads as well as take up top narrator roles including Piglet in a full cast dramatization of The Collected Stories of Winnie the Pooh.
15. Jeremy Irons
According to a 2008 British study to find the perfect voice, Jeremy Irons comes up trump with a near-ideal score.
And it’s not just the deep, rich tone of his voice but also the fact that he spaces his words well, pausing for 1.2 seconds between sentences. Who knew?!
Well, actually, those who probably did know include all who cast him for his perfectly posh, rounded vowels and velvety-sounding inflections. I mean, really, could anyone else have played the proud, manipulative Scar in Disney’s animated movie, The Lion King? We think not.
Though he continues to tread the boards of stage and screen, over the years Irons has also been pulled in to voice various documentaries, radio poetry readings and CDs, and, fantastically, the English language audio guide tour of Westminister Abbey in London, England.
So, these are just 15 of the many, many great British voice actors that are out there – including these top 10 talents. But if we’ve forgotten any you think should be on the list, please let us know.
And if you’re looking to cast a British voice actor in your next project or ad campaign, you can also post your project on our online platform.
Make sure you request custom auditions based on your script (it’s free!) to really hone in on the voice that’s right for your brand and message.
Additionally, if you need help casting the right talent for you, drop us a line and we’ll be happy to help!
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