Canadian · b. 1965 · 1990s – present
Jennifer Hale is widely regarded as the finest dramatic voice actress in games, most celebrated as Commander Shepard in the Mass Effect trilogy and with roots in 1990s PC gaming that span dozens of classic titles.
Jennifer Hale began accumulating game credits in the mid-1990s, voicing characters in Baldur's Gate (1998) — where she played Dynaheir, Jaheira, and others simultaneously — Metal Gear Solid (1998), and dozens of other PC and console titles before Mass Effect made her a household name in gaming. Her Commander Shepard in Mass Effect (2007) and its sequels is the performance that defines her: Shepard is required to be authoritative in command, emotionally available in personal relationships, and capable of moral reasoning under pressure, and Hale delivers each mode without the transitions feeling forced. The scale of the role — hundreds of hours of dialogue recorded across a trilogy — is itself remarkable. In older titles, Hale's range and commitment elevated material that might otherwise have gone unnoticed; her presence in a mid-1990s PC RPG was frequently the production's strongest element. She holds the Guinness World Record for the most video game voice-over credits for a female actor.