American · b. 1960 · 1990s – 2020s
A former radio DJ who was told to do Dirty Harry, did it, and was then told to go bigger than Clint Eastwood. He dropped his voice, and Duke Nukem was born.
Jon St. John, born on 19 December 1960, started out in voice work in 1975 as a radio DJ in North Carolina, long before the role that defined him. For Duke Nukem 3D in 1996, 3D Realms needed a voice for its swaggering, one-liner-spouting hero. The voice director, Lani Minella, first told St. John to channel Dirty Harry. He read the line exactly that way — and producer George Broussard redirected him: Duke was not Clint Eastwood, he was something much bigger, larger than life. St. John lowered his voice further, and the gravelly, self-satisfied delivery that resulted sold Broussard on the spot. It became one of the most imitated voices in 1990s gaming, and St. John has played Duke in the series ever since. The same years brought a completely different role for Sega: Big the Cat, the slow, gentle fisherman of the Sonic Adventure games, followed later by E-123 Omega in Sonic Heroes. Across a career of more than a hundred game roles since 1996, he has remained best known for the one that began with a misdirected impression of Dirty Harry.