Voice acting is the art of providing voices for animated characters (including those in feature films, television programs, animated short films, and video games) and radio and audio dramas and comedy, as well as doing voice-overs in radio and television commercials, audio dramas, dubbed foreign language films, video games, puppet shows, and amusement rides.

Performers are called voice actors/actresses, voice artists or simply voice talent, and their roles may also involve singing, although a second voice actor is sometimes cast as the character's singing voice. Voice artists are also used to record the individual sample fragments played back by a computer in an automated announcement. At its simplest, this is just a short phrase which is played back as necessary, e.g. the Mind the gap announcement introduced by London Underground in 1969. In a more complicated system such as a speaking clock, the voice artist usually doesn't actually record 1440 different announcements, one for each minute of the day, or even 60 (one for each minute of the hour), instead the announcement is re-assembled from fragments such as "minutes past" "eighteen" and "pm." For example, the word "twelve" can be used for both "Twelve O'Clock" and "Six Twelve." For some automated applications, such as London Underground's Mind the gap announcement, the sound of a voice artist may be preferred over synthesized voices because the human voices sound more natural to the listener.

Thomas James "Tom" Kenny (born July 13, 1962) is an American actor, voice actor, and comedian. He is known for his long-running-role as SpongeBob SquarePants in the television series of the same name, as well as the live-action character Patchy the Pirate, Gary the Snail and the French narrator based on Jacques Cousteau. He is also the Mayor and narrator of Cartoon Network's The Powerpuff Girls and ScoutMaster Lumpus and Slinkman from Camp Lazlo. Aside from voice acting, Kenny starred in the short-lived Fox sketch show The Edge and was a cast member of the HBO sketch comedy program Mr. Show, where he worked with his wife, Jill Talley. He is also known for being one of the longest-working voice actors to voice Spyro in the Spyro the Dragon series. He voiced Spyro three times, followed by Elijah Wood who voiced Spyro on the same number of instances. Later in 2011, the role of Spyro was passed on to Josh Keaton in: Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure.

He currently voices the Ice King in the Cartoon Network animated series Adventure Time with Finn and Jake, and voices additional characters on Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated. He also voices Quantum Ray in Cosmic Quantum Ray and Plastic Man in Batman: The Brave and the Bold. As of 2007, he hosted the TV show Funday Night at the Movies on Turner Classic Movies (TCM) which encourages children to watch old movies.