Creator / Tara Strong

Tara Lyn Charendoff Strong (born February 12, 1973) is a Canadian-American actress, voice-over artist, comedian, and singer, perhaps best known for voice acting in animated films and television. She has a versatile voice.

Born Tara Lyn Charendoff in Toronto, Ontario, her acting career began when she volunteered to be a soloist in an upcoming school production at age four. Soon, she began acting in the Yiddish Theater; though she didn't speak the Yiddish language, she memorized her lines phonetically. During this time, she also performed at the Toronto Jewish Theater, where she acted in A Night of Stars, and was featured in "Lay Down Your Arms" with the Habonim Youth Choir, where she sang the lyrics in both English and Hebrew.

Her voice acting career began in 1987, with the role of Hello Kitty, from Hello Kitty's Furry Tale Theater, a Canadian-American-Japanese joint production. She would later move from Toronto to Los Angeles in 1993. She was a popular voice actor for the companies Nelvana, Cartoon Network, and Nickelodeon. She has done live action work as well - notably as Gwen in the Sabrina the Teenage Witch Made For TV Movies - but says that voice acting takes up most of her time.

She frequent co-stars with fellow actress Cree Summer; the two are childhood friends and grew up in Toronto together. She is married to American actor Craig Strong and they have two sons. Together, they founded VoiceStarz, Inc., an Internet-based company which teaches people how to get into the voice-over business, of which Craig is the C.E.O..

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Tara Strong's voice-acting credits include:

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Tropes found in her voice acting:

• Actor Allusion:
  • She also voices a pony-parody of possibly Twilight Sparkle in Pretty Pretty Pegasus, in which her character Raven is a closet fan of.
    • Another pony reference in a DC project; in Injustice 2, Tara voices Harley Quinn and can have this exchange with Mr. Freeze at the start of a match.
    Harley Quinn: Can you make me a pony?
    Mr. Freeze: It shall make the twilight sparkle.
    Harley Quinn: I was hoping you'd say that!
  • In an episode of My Little Pony, Twilight says "do I look like I speak squirrel?" - a nod to Bubbles of The Powerpuff Girls, who had the power to communicate with animals.
• Casting Gag: She plays Batgirl/Barbara Gordon in Batman: The Animated Series, Gotham Girls, Super Best Friends Forever, and Beware the Batman.
• Contractual Purity: She once turned down a role in a horror film that would have required a topless scene - as she didn't want her young fans (or perverts) looking up pictures of it online. But then again she did list her role in the Drawn Together cartoon as one of her favourites - precisely because it was different from the family friendly stuff she usually did.
• Cross-Dressing Voices: She voices quite a few boys, such as Timmy Turner, Terrence, Ben Tennyson, and Omi.
• Fake American: Sort of; she was born in Toronto, but her parents are American.
• Fake Brit: As Gwen in Sabrina Goes to Rome and Sabrina Down Under and as a hallucination in Samurai Jack.
• Fake Irish: In Jakkers! The Adventures of Piggley Winks.
• I Am Not Spock: Played with on her twitter, she often posts pictures or fanart of her characters saying things like "Here's me naked!" <screenshot of Timmy Turner>, "Here I am in my sexy swimsuit!" <fanart of Raven>, "Dancing with yourself is important" <fanart of Twilight Sparkle and a pony version of herself>, "Here's me about to give you tongue!" <screenshot of Ember McLain>.
• Magnum Opus Dissonance: Her favourite role is actually Melody in The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea, for reasons detailed below.
• Non-Singing Voice: Only in My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic where Twilight Sparkle's singing is done by Rebecca Shoichet. This is mainly due to Tara being the only main cast member who records her lines in Los Angeles while the rest of the main cast records in Canada. The cast usually needs to be together to record songs for the show and Tara didn't want to travel back-and-forth and be away from her kids. Tara is actually quite a good singer and has sung in other roles. This led to in inversion on Family Guy where she's the singing voice for Meg because Mila Kunis can't sing.
• One of Us: Oh so very much. Seems to have hit some kind of critical mass with the Brony thing, but it's always been there; one need only check out her interviews. She also follows Chuggaaconroy on Twitter. Yes—THE Chuggaaconroy.
  • She came to a recent Comic Con dressed as Ashi basically showing that she loves the character as much as her fans do, and she hated what happened to her at the end as well!
• Playing Against Type:
  • As Doctor Octopus 2099 and Harley Quinn.
  • Princess Clara, Toot Braunstein, Juliet Starling, and various female characters on Brickleberry are also oddities on her resume, as she's mostly known for being on kids' cartoons (some of which do have Parental Bonus jokes and moments of Getting Crap Past the Radar, but are still considered children's entertainment).
  • She also voices Ferra, one half of Ferra/Torr, in Mortal Kombat X, which is part of a series that's become famous (or infamous, depending on how you look at it) for its over-the-top, gory finishers. More in line with what you'd expect, however, is her portrayal of the refugee Li Mei in the same game.
  • Lena from Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island could be considered the most villainous character that she has ever played, though out of all the three main villains she was the least evil.
• Promoted Fangirl: She was a huge The Little Mermaid fan and got to play Ariel's daughter in the sequel. She often tells the story of when she first met Jodi Benson in the studio, Tara burst into Tears of Joy.
• Relationship Voice Actor:
  • She often appears alongside Grey DeLisle and Cree Summer. The fact that they're good friends in real life probably helps.
  • She and Max Casella even worked on two projects together: The Little Mermaid II and Jak and Daxter (third game onwards).
  • She also appeared alongside James Arnold Taylor in Final Fantasy X, the Ratchet & Clank games, Drawn Together, and plenty more.
  • She's also worked alongside her fellow Teen Titans cast members in other projects, with Scott Menville and Khary Payton being the ones she tends to work with the most.
  • She and Tabitha St. Germain, aside from playing two of the Mane Six, have also worked on the latter two Super Mario Bros. cartoons and Beetlejuice.
• Retroactive Recognition: Any of her Toronto work.
• Star-Making Role:
  • While she's known for numerous roles, Bubbles is arguably the role that put her on the map as far as voice actors go.
  • Given the success of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, Twilight Sparkle is also a turning point in her career.
• Talking to Herself: Tara often voices multiple characters in her works:
  • On Drawn Together, she voices two main characters, Toot and Clara, so their interactions are frequent.
  • During Batman: The Brave and the Bold episode "The Malicious Mr. Mind", she voices Shazam characters Billy and Mary, as well as toddler Batman, while they try to re-age the Caped Crusader.
  • An amusing example is Hip and Hop in the Super Mario Bros. cartoons where as two separate characters, Tara would finish her own sentences.
  • She voices main character Timmy on The Fairly Oddparents, as well as numerous background characters who tend to interact with him. When they added baby Poof to the fairies, she was given that job as well.
  • She reprises her roles from Batman: Arkham Series and Teen Titans in Injustice: Gods Among Us as Harley Quinn and Raven, respectively.
• Vocal Evolution: Her earliest roles sound very different from her later ones. But she can still pull off some of her 90's-era voices if prompted.
  • Hell, she can do the first role she did from the age of 13 pretty faithfully.
  • This will presumably be seen within a single role in A Series of Unfortunate Events (2017), as over the course of the story Sunny Baudelaire gradually goes from an infant speaking gibberish to a young girl able to speak normally.
• The Other Darrin: Mary Kay Bergman voiced Timmy Turner in the original Fairly Odd Parents shorts, and Tara took over after she passed away - continuing to voice Timmy in the proper cartoon.
• Trolling Creator: A self-proclaimed, unabashed troll, she is well known for poking fun at the fans and subverting expectations. For instance, she once promised to have Twilight Sparkle "talk dirty", and this was the result...
• Typecasting: She has a tendency to play the roles of overly cutesy, hyperactive characters. Largely averted as her career has gone on, as she has quite a bit of range, having played several different age ranges (babies, children [boys and girls, but mostly boys], teenage girls and adult women) as well as playing darker types in addition to cutesy types, such as Raven.
• You Look Familiar: Well, you sound familiar, but Tara first provided the voice of Molly Dolly in Sabrina the Teenage Witch's third season - and then starred as Gwen in the spin-off movies.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Lauren Faust originally wanted Strong to play Pinkie Pie in My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic before that role was given to Andrea Libman. She also did an audition for Applejack.
  • She was going to be the second voice of Marie for the sequel for Disney's The Aristocats which was planned to be released in 2007 but got cancelled in 2006 once Disney acquired Pixar.
  • She very nearly got the role of Julia Salinger in Party of Five. The role went to Neve Campbell, who Tara was roommates with at the time. Tara did make a small appearance on the second episode as Lorna.
  • She wasn't originally going to be in The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea. She was brought into the studio to record a template, which producers would then give to a Celebrity Voice Actor. However her performance impressed them enough to cast her as Melody properly.
  • She had planned to give Lena in Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island a Cajun accent and spent some time working on it. However Jim Cummings, an expert at the Cajun dialect, said it didn't sound accurate, so she went with a more general southern accent.
  • Strong has expressed desire for a role on The Simpsons but so far nothing has come out of it yet.
• Woman of a Thousand Voices: Tara can go from Bubbles, to Timmy Turner and Poof, to Toot and Clara, to Dil Pickles, to Batgirl, to Lyca, to Rikku, to Sari Sumdac, to Twilight Sparkle and even to Raven, Doctor Octopus 2099, and Harley Quinn – with Bubbles, Toot, and (to a lesser extent) Timmy Turner the only three that sound similar to anyone with a trained ear.
  • Batgirl, Ingrid Third, Lyca and Ashi are the only roles she's done using her natural speaking voice.^note However, in the Lavender Castle episode Bird of Prey, she uses her Bubbles voice for the scene when the Paradox and its crew are shrunk down by the black hole.
  • She can also go deep in her voice, as Raven from Injustice: Gods Among Us demonstrates.
    • Apparently, when asked about this at a con in 2013, she said, she had no idea about it, until watching clips of Raven in the game. So it was probably pitched down in post.
  • To elaborate further, in 2012, Emerald City Comic Con featured a sketch where famous voice actors voiced some of their famous roles in place of the characters from the movie Star Wars (e.g. Yakko and Wakko as two Death Star admirals, Calculon as Tarkin, etc.), switching every scene. Tara voiced everyone from Raven to Toot to Twilight Sparkle to Princess Clara. (This is a regular thing at San Diego Comic Con as well, though it's more often done with public domain fairy tales than Star Wars.) This later lead to the Twisted Toonz series of panels.

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