Ink Suit Actor / Disney

Sgt. Calhoun has more than just the voice of Jane Lynch.

Despite its fixation on maintaining its iconic characters, Disney also used obvious caricatures of its stock company voice actors in many films — thinly-disguised versions of Paul "Tigger" Winchell and Buddy Hackett show up a lot. During the Golden Age of Disney Animation, basing characters on their voice actors was virtually company policy.

• Aladdin:
  • The Genie, possibly the textbook example of this trope, does bear some facial resemblance to Robin Williams. Except for the beard. And the muscles. And being blue, of course. Also, Iago's animator Will Finn admitted he tried to copy Gilbert Gottfried, down to the teeth. In a more unintentional case, Scott Weinger and Linda Larkin have some resemblance to Aladdin and Jasmine. (even if the latter was inspired by the animator's sister◊, who returned the favor by dressing as Jasmine). Jafar is not much of a case, as Andreas Deja said that while Jonathan Freeman doesn't resemble the character he copied his facial expressions... unless you count an inversion when Freeman was cast as Jafar on Broadway.
  • Cassim from Aladdin and the King of Thieves was modeled after Sean Connery, who was originally considered for the role. Disney was afraid that Connery's fame would overshadow the rest of the movie, so John Rhys-Davies ended up voicing Cassim instead. His impression of Connery is not badly done.
• In Disney's Alice in Wonderland, Kathryn Beaumont, Ed Wynn, and Jerry Colonna served as the physical models as well as the voice actors for Alice, Mad Hatter, and March Hare, respectively. All three acted out their scenes in the studio for the animators to study, and the Hatter's lines as he "fixes" the White Rabbit's watch (mostly ad-libbed by Wynn) were taken directly from one of those reference sessions, not re-recorded later.
• According to the DVD commentary for Beauty and the Beast, the producers mentioned that Richard White and Jesse Corti were the physical doubles of Gaston and Lefou.
• In Big Hero 6,:
  • Fred's father is a direct animated version of Stan Lee.
  • Alistair Krei definitely seems to have been at least somewhat modeled after Alan Tudyk.
• The moose brothers Rutt and Tuke from Brother Bear, being animal versions of the McKenzie Bros. from SCTV, would bear some resemblance to Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas respectively. Rutt was modeled with Rick's rounded eyes and lower lip, while Tuke was drawn with Dave's eyebrows.
• In DuckTales (2017), Fenton Crackshell-Cabrera is essentially Lin-Manuel Miranda as a cartoon duck. Fenton was given a Race Lift to make the character Hispanic (complete with olive "skin"), and he has Miranda's usual speech patterns, to the point that it's easy to forget that Fenton is supposed to be a young man in his early 20's.
• In The Emperor's New Groove, Yzma is a blatant caricature of her voice actress Eartha Kitt as the elderly woman she was at the time. According to interviews at the time, the animators were somewhat worried that she would be offended when she saw the character design, but she was amused.
• Dolores Madrigal, from Encanto, resembles her voice actress, Adassa. In fact pretty much the entire family looks like their voice actors animated to the point where when the cast was brought back together for a Hollywood Bowl they would look scarily like the characters in live action with their costumes.
• Enchanted is a traditional animation/live action crossover, but most of the live-action actors start off as traditionally animated characters in the fairy tale world. Your mileage varies as to how much the animated version of the character matches the actor playing them. Animated Giselle looks more like a generic princess than Amy Adams. Animated Nathaniel is such a spot on caricature of Timothy Spall that you know it's him before he can open his mouth. Animated Edward's resemblance to James Marsden and Animated Narissa's resemblance to Susan Sarandon are somewhere in between.
• Ratigan from The Great Mouse Detective is not a close physical caricature of Vincent Price, but the actor's own Large Ham gestures when performing the voice acting were incorporated into the character. (This was apparently also true for Basil's actor Barrie Ingham, who apparently couldn't resist some Ham-to-Ham Combat.)
• Hermes from Hercules is a direct caricature of Paul Shaffer, even down to the glasses. Short, chubby, balding satyr Phil is the animated reflection of his voice actor, the short, chubby, balding Danny Devito, as you can see here◊. Megara also bears a striking resemblance to her voice actress, Susan Egan.
• Home on the Range: Steve Buscemi as Mr. Wesley, which is probably the closest thing you can get to an actor physically playing a role in an animated feature.
• Esmeralda from The Hunchback of Notre Dame is a tanned version of her voice actress Demi Moore.
• According to the DVD Commentary for The Jungle Book, the characters were designed to resemble their voice actors. This is most apparent in Shere Khan... look at a picture of him and then look at George Sanders and it's obvious. King Louie is Louis Prima — to the point where it raised legal issues when The Jungle Book's cast was adapted to TaleSpin (and Louie remains conspicuously absent from Disney's sequel). The vultures also bear a resemblance to The Beatles, who were originally planned to be their voices. Scheduling conflicts and such led to these roles having to be changed to other voice actors (but the Liverpudlian accents remained, and one of the new actors was even from a duo in The British Invasion).
• Compare Baloo from The Jungle Book (1967), Little John from Robin Hood (1973), and Thomas O'Malley in The Aristocats. All are an expy of the other and all were voiced by Phil Harris. Partly explained by the fact that these films were made during The Dark Age of Animation and Disney was cutting corners and retracing character designs from earlier movies.
• In The Lion King, Jeremy Irons was pleased that he could "see himself" in Scar, as animator Andreas Deja watched Irons' movies to incorporate his tics and mannerisms, and the lion's baggy eyes made Scar even closer to the original. And despite being a hornbill, Zazu is immediately recognizable as Rowan Atkinson.
• Prince Eric in The Little Mermaid (1989) looks like a slightly more muscular version of his voice actor, Christopher Daniel Barnes, at the time the movie was being made.
• Oliver & Company featured Billy Joel as Dodger. Despite being a dog, Dodger still manages to bear some resemblance to Billy Joel.
• Season 4 of Once Upon a Time became a lengthy crossover with Frozen, showing off flashbacks that expand on the backstory surrounding Anna and Elsa's parents and also Anna and Elsa's relationship following the events of the movie. Because it's live action, this trope is weirdly inverted in OUAT: Georgina Haig is a physical dead ringer for Elsa's animated counterpart. Elsa is a noticeable standout, but the actors who play Anna (Elizabeth Lail), Kristoff (Scott Michael Foster) and Hans (Tyler Jacob Moore) also bear great resemblance to their animated counterparts in both physical appearance and costume compared to the rest of the OUAT cast.
• Hans Conried as both Captain Hook and Mr. Darling in Peter Pan. This was one of the few things that the film had in common with the original stage play. Also, in the same film, Bobby Driscoll as Peter Pan himself and Kathryn Beaumont as Wendy.
• Pinocchio:
  • When they were working on the film, the animators had a hard time trying to come up with a design for Geppetto until they cast character actor Christian Rub for the role.
  • A variant with Lampwick, who is an Ink-Suit Animator rather than Actor; he was designed as a self-caricature of his animator, Fred Moore.
• Pirates of the Caribbean: Davy Jones' facial features, especially his eyes and cheekbones, were modeled directly from Bill Nighy's head using motion-capture dots on his face.
• Pixar:
  • Cars series:
    • Series protagonist Lightning McQueen has the same sky blue eyes and smooth smile as Owen Wilson.
    • The opening sentence of Roger Ebert's review of the first film:
      I wouldn't have thought that even in animation a 1951 Hudson Hornet could look simultaneously like itself and like Paul Newman, but you will witness that feat, and others, in "Cars."
    • All of the Cars movies have prominent cameos from racing veterans, generally voicing cars that they've driven during their driving career, and getting many of their tics and mannerisms down too.
  • Coco: Many viewers point out that Gael García Bernal strongly resembles his character, Héctor.
  • The Incredibles: Samuel L. Jackson animated as-is to create Lucius/Frozone.
  • Anger in Inside Out has all of Lewis Black's characteristic physical gestures and tics that anyone familiar with his stand-up routine would recognize, such as speaking through gritted teeth, angry spastic hand gestures, Giving Someone the Pointer Finger, and the occasional Slasher Smile.
  • Monsters, Inc.: Despite being cartoon monsters, Sulley and Randall look a lot like their respective voice actors, John Goodman and Steve Buscemi—Sulley has Goodman's tall stature and imposing yet gentle frame, and Randall has Buscemi's thin build and blue eyes.
  • The Combat Carl toy that appears in Toy Story of Terror was voiced by Carl Weathers — and can be summed up was "What if Dillon from the original Predator actually managed to escape from the Jungle Hunter after losing his arm and survive?"
  • Turning Red: Most of the cast resemble their voice actors in Animesque CGI form. Mei looks very much like Rosalie Chiang minus the hair length and color post-transformation, her friend Priya completely resembles Maitreyi Ramakrishnan, and Ming looks like Sandra Oh dead-on.
  • In Up, Carl Fredricksen, Russell, and Charles Muntz are designed after voice actors Ed Asner, Jordan Nagai, and Christopher Plummer, respectively.
• Pocahontas:
  • Irene Bedard was the speaking voice and the physical model for the title character. (The character's singing actress, Judy Kuhn, looks nothing like her.)
  • Christian Bale's character, Thomas, resembles the actor. Bale admitted as much in a 1995 interview for Disney Adventures, adding that Disney had even sent in an artist to sketch the actor's movements during recording.
  • Russell Means, an enrolled member of the Oglala Band of Lakota, who voices Chief Powhatan^note the historic person's real name is Wahunsenacah, but the movie does not use this name, Pocahontas' father. (Jim Cummings (1952), Disney's go-to guy for deep and/or mellow voices, took care of the chief's singing voice.)
• Tiana in The Princess and the Frog not only looks like Anika Noni Rose, but is left-handed like her.
• Percival McLeach from The Rescuers Down Under is a caricatured George C. Scott, both for his face and mannerisms.
• Sleeping Beauty:
  • Flora bears resemblance to her voice actress, Verna Felton.
  • Merryweather bears more than a passing resemblance to her voice actress in the Final Cut, Barbara Luddy.
  • Maleficent definitely shares resemblance to her performance model and voice actress, Eleanor Audley.
  • King Stefan heavily bears resemblance to his performance model and original intended voice actor, Hans Conried ^note Conried did the audition for Stefan's part in the dialogue version of a Cut Song; but for the film’s final version, he was himself replaced by Taylor Holmes as the voice role of Stefan for his final film role.
• Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs: In her Witch form, the Evil Queen bears a clear resemblance to her voice actress Lucille La Verne in the latter's live-action "old hag" roles – e.g. as "the Vengeance" in A Tale of Two Cities (1935) – although with exaggerated ugliness.
• Other than his bulbous nose, Searcher Clade from Strange World strongly resembles his voice actor, Jake Gyllenhaal, complete with the stubble.
• In Tangled, Mother Gothel bears a strong resemblance to Donna Murphy. Rapunzel's resemblance to Mandy Moore is noticeable when her hair is cut short at the end of the movie and turns brunette.
• The title character from Winnie the Pooh uses a LOT of Sterling Holloway's distinctive mannerisms. Watching his rare live-action appearances can be really quite disconcerting, especially as Holloway used his natural voice for the part.
• All four main characters in Wreck-It Ralph were built to resemble their voice actors.◊ Ralph is a bulked up John C. Reilly, Felix's resemblance to Jack McBrayer is pretty spot on, Calhoun looks like a slightly deaged Jane Lynch (and in an interesting inversion of the trope, Lynch has subsequently cosplayed Calhoun in real life!), and Vanellope von Schweetz is a young caricature of Sarah Silverman. Ralph Breaks the Internet in 2018 adds Shank, who looks almost exactly like they just animated Gal Gadot.
• In Zootopia: Gazelle is Shakira as a gazelle. Both of them are pop stars, have blonde curly hair, broad hips, and wear similar outfits. The only difference being Gazelle wears shoes and Shakira Prefers Going Barefoot, ironic as Gazelle is essentially one of the few characters to wear shoes in the film.

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