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5 Of Cinema’s Greatest Voiceover Narrators

Actors can cultivate their skills through years of training and learning their craft from all sorts of experts. They can take steps to improve their appearance, whether through natural, chemical or surgical means. But unless I’m missing something, the one part of a performer that it seems there’s no real way of attaining other than the happy accident of being born with it, is the quality of the voice. Certainly this is something that be augmented by how it’s used, and a case can most likely be made that the size of the voice doesn’t matter. But if Ted Williams, a.k.a. the homeless man with the golden voice, taught us anything, it’s that some people are just born with a gift for speaking in a way that tickles the eardrum just so.

[h2]4) Werner Herzog[/h2]

Werner Herzog

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German filmmaker Werner Herzog is known first and foremost for his work as a director, helming some of the most acclaimed films of all time as well as some of the most compelling documentaries in recent years. Most recently, he appeared in front of the camera in the Tom Cruise vehicle Jack Reacher, as the sinisterly foreign villain, The Zec. This is at once surprising and also kind of a perfect fit for Herzog, whose voice has attained a kind of legendary status in the cinephile community, as it’s a character whose dialogue is delivered for the most part over the phone.

This status is a result of Herzog narrating many of his own documentaries, with his odd and distinctive voice, as well as his affinity for poetic language to describe the images as they unfold. But then of course his German accent makes everything sound somewhat nefarious to English-speaking audiences, and so there’s a quality of mischief if not evil to everything that he says, even when he’s describing penguins. This also makes for an even greater effect when it’s put to comedic use.

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