Ink Suit Actor / Film

aka: Films

The Conductor and Tom Hanks are very alike, except that the animated Tom Hanks has a mustache, while the real-life Tom Hanks does not.

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• An odd subversion in Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. Gray was voiced by Alec Baldwin, but looked exactly like Ben Affleck. Reviewers did not fail to notice this. Peri Gilpin◊ does have some resemblance to Jane◊, while Donald Sutherland◊ could play a live-action Dr. Sid if he shaved his head.
• Transformers Film Series:
  • Transformers: Dark of the Moon has Sentinel Prime who looks almost exactly like Leonard Nimoy (though the artists stated that his appearance is also inspired by Sean Connery in the '70s).
  • Transformers: Age of Extinction has Ken Watanabe as Drift (who pushes the Casting Gag even further by being a samurai robot) and John Goodman as Hound◊.
  • According to director Stephen Caple Jr., Optimus Prime's unmasked face in Transformers: Rise of the Beasts is based on his longtime voice actor Peter Cullen for a rare non-marquee actor example.
• Dragonheart has a dragon voiced by Sean Connery who uses his expressions and mannerisms in an uncanny way.
• DreamWorks Animation:
  • The Prince of Egypt: The animators drew Yocheved (all of whose lines are delivered in song) to look just like her voice actress, Ofra Haza.
    • Tzipporah's design was also influenced by her voice actress, Michelle Pfeiffer.
    • Aaron, Moses's brother, has a tall, thin frame and similar facial structure to his voice actor, Jeff Goldblum.
  • Miguel from The Road to El Dorado has been noted by some to bear a slight resemblance◊ to his voice actor, Kenneth Branagh.
  • Also from their traditional phase, Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas doesn't try to hide◊ Brad Pitt, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Michelle Pfeiffer in the main roles.
  • Shrek:
    • Cameron Diaz said that watching Fiona felt like looking at her brunette (uh, redhead?) sister. Also, Shrek seems to be designed after Chris Farley, who was supposed to voice him before his death. (In the second film, his human form is based on his voice actor, Mike Myers.) Donkey also looks just like Eddie Murphy in donkey form.
    • Puss in Boots: The Last Wish features Goldilocks, who bears a resemblance to her voice actress, Florence Pugh.
  • Shark Tale has been criticized for taking this method much too far, making fish with human heads◊ that resemble their actors - though the subtler exception are the sharks, which keep fish-like despite Don Lino keeping Robert De Niro's mole◊. In Doug Walker's "Dreamworks-uary" review of the film, he even calls the characters "Will Smith-fish, Jack Black-shark, Renée Zellweger-fish, etc." instead of their actual names.
    Doug: You don't see these characters as actual characters. You just see the celebrities representing them...
  • Bee Movie includes Jerry Seinfeld and Larry King as bees (the latter of which is even called "Bee Larry King"), and Vanessa is clearly a brunette Renée Zellweger.
  • President Hathaway in Monsters vs. Aliens is a highly caricatured version of Stephen Colbert.
  • In How to Train Your Dragon, Gerard Butler said "half his career led him to play Stoick" and he could see a lot of himself in him◊ (particularly the animation), and Jay Baruchel commented on how Hiccup's scrawny frame made the character closer to himself.
  • Po Ping from Kung Fu Panda is basically Jack Black in panda form.
  • In The Croods, the entire family including Guy resembled their actors as cavemen.
  • Played with in Penguins of Madagascar. Despite being a purple octopus with red eyes and a mouthful of crooked teeth, Dave displays some very John Malkovich-like facial expressions.
• Robert Zemeckis' Motion Capture films:
  • The Polar Express, starring Tom Hanks, has every single character's face altered to look like Tom Hanks, resulting in a very freaky looking main character.
  • Everyone in the 2007 Beowulf. Ray Winstone noted that he loved watching the film because it cut twenty years off him and sent him to the gym, while still being recognizably him.
    • Angelina Jolie's character, in particular, though with some, er, enhancements to her shape.
  • In A Christmas Carol (2009), Scrooge is made to resemble his voice actor Jim Carrey... that is, if Carrey were an old, miserly British man. Even more obvious when the Ghost of Christmas Past has Jim Carrey's face.
• Averted mostly in his early films, but Don Bluth eventually hopped on this bandwagon when The Renaissance Age of Animation was gaining speed. The most notable examples occur in Thumbelina, with Mrs. Toad being mostly modeled after her voice actress, the Spanish actress/guitarist Charo (and jarringly so), and in Anastasia, where the titular character has a passing resemblance to Meg Ryan.
• Done intentionally in Rover Dangerfield; Rover is Rodney Dangerfield as a talking dog, no doubt about it.
• Rankin/Bass Productions:
  • Terry-Thomas voices one of the tailors in The Daydreamer. The character is far stouter than the fairly skinny Thomas, but shares his famed gap-toothed grin. (As does his character Sir Hiss in Disney's Robin Hood (1973), with his forked snake tongue often wiggling through the gap.)
  • In The Last Unicorn, the Lady Amalthea has a slight resemblance to her voice actress, Mia Farrow. They share the same sad eyes and head shape.
• There is no denying that Davey in Eight Crazy Nights is basically just an animated version of Adam Sandler. Similarly, Tom Baltezor is an animated Jon Lovitz with a hook for a hand.
• Another Sandler-related example is Dracula from Hotel Transylvania, who is little more than a caricatured version of Sandler but with a funny accent.
• In Spies in Disguise, Lance Sterling's design is based on his voice actor, Will Smith. Same goes for Walter being a near carbon copy of Tom Holland.
• In Rick & Steve: The Happiest Gay Couple in All the World, Condi Ling is basically Margaret Cho.
• In The Rugrats Movie, the two forest rangers clearly resemble David Spade and the aforementioned Whoopi Goldberg.
• Avatar. Which, to be sure, was kind of the point.
• In a non-animated example, the The Gingerdead Man looks exactly like Gary Busey.
• Most of the human characters in Curious George look startlingly like their voice actors (Maggie is Drew Barrymore, Mr. Bloomsberry is Dick Van Dyke, Junior is David Cross etc). Notable exception: Ted, who looks nothing like Will Ferrell and more like... well... The Man In The Yellow Hat.
• Curious example in The Lord of the Rings: though Andy Serkis played Gollum even on the set, the CGI design wasn't originally based on him, until in 2001 he was cast to play Sméagol (Gollum's previous self) for a flashback scene in The Return of the King, and they redesigned it so they could show the transformation. They weren't in time to change the design for The Fellowship of the Ring though, but he hardly shows up in four scenes, all of which are in the dark, so it's no big deal.
• In Epic (2013) Queen Tara looks an awful lot like Beyoncé.
• The LEGO Movie:
  • President Business is a Lego minifig designed to look as much like Will Ferrell as a minifig can. That's because in-universe, he's based on Finn's dad, the Man Upstairs, who's physically played by Ferrell.
  • Chris Pratt has said in an interview Emmet, despite having the most generic and simplistic face a Lego minifig can have, has some subtle facial features that resemble his own, such as the proportions of the mouth and eyebrows.
• Corpse Bride is about a man named Victor Van Dort accidentally marrying a dead woman... but with the character's strong resemblance to his voice actor, it might as well be about Johnny Depp marrying a dead woman instead. Also, resemblance to Helena Bonham Carter can be seen in both Emily, who Bonham Carter voices, and Victoria, who is voiced by Emily Watson. This is because Victoria was originally going to be voiced by Bonham Carter, and as such was designed to look like her. When Bonham Carter asked to voice Emily instead, Emily was redesigned to look like her as well.
• Julie in Heavy Metal 2000, modeled after and voiced by actress Julie Strain. The same actress is in the same Ink Suit in the game adaptation, F.A.K.K.2.
• Neil DeBuck Weasel from Ice Age: Collision Course is a weasel version of Neil deGrasse Tyson no less.
  • And there's a mammoth who is Ray Romano in pachyderm form. Diego also looks almost entirely like a smilodon version of his voice actor.
• In The Incredibles, Samuel L. Jackson is pretty much animated as-is to create Lucius Best/Frozone.
• The title character of The Incredible Mr. Limpet looks so much like Don Knotts (who voices him and portrays his human version) that it's almost disquieting.
• Songbird Serenade in My Little Pony: The Movie (2017) is basically Sia as a pony.
  • Sunset Shimmer in her human form bears a strong resemblance to her voice actress, Rebecca Shoichet.
• In Elf, Leon the Snowman is literally his voice actor Leon Redbone in the form of a snowman, complete with "[his] walking stick".
• The characters in Loving Vincent resemble Van Gogh's portraits (which, of course, portrayed real people), but also strongly resemble their actors. Marguerite Gachet in particular more closely resembles Saoirse Ronan than her real-life counterpart.
• Batman: Return of the Caped Crusaders, as befitting it being an animated movie set in the universe of the 1960s Batman (1966) series, sees Batman, Robin, and Catwoman resemble Adam West, Burt Ward, and Julie Newmar back during the days of the series. Likewise, its sequel Batman vs. Two-Face sees Harvey Dent both before becoming Two-Face and his unscarred side afterward resemble his voice actor, William Shatner, circa Star Trek: The Original Series.
• After the tragic death of Judith Barsi, her character Anne-Marie in All Dogs Go to Heaven was partially redesigned to resemble her a bit more.
• Inverted in the live-action Disney film Maleficent, in which many of the actors were cast partly for their resemblance to the animated character designs in the original Sleeping Beauty.
• In Monster House, officers Landers and Lister resemble their voice actors, Kevin James and Nick Cannon, respectively.
• Downplayed in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse with its versions of Peter B. Parker, the Peter Parker from Miles Morales's universe, and Spider-Gwen. While they're not complete likenesses for Jake Johnson, Chris Pine, or Hailee Steinfeld, they do resemble their respective voice actors more than typical depictions of Peter or Gwen. Likewise, while not a complete likewise, the Prowler's unmasked face features some of Mahershala Ali's features and Miles Morales resembles a younger version of his voice actor, Shameik Moore. Also, given Doctor Octopus received a Gender Flip specifically to bring in Kathryn Hahn, Olivia Octavius ends up resembling her. The sequel gives us Miguel O'Hara, who in his unmasked state has a stronger resemblance to Oscar Isaac than his comic book counterpart.
• Giuseppe, the Italian man in The Super Mario Bros. Movie who complements Mario and Luigi's Italian accents in their commercial, was deliberately made to look somewhat like Charles Martinet, his voice actor and also the original voice actor of Mario himself; he has Martinet's graying hair.
• Turning Red:
  • Mei basically looks like her voice actor in CGI animated form, minus the hair post-transformation.
  • Even more so with Mei, Ming is basically a dead-on animated version of Sandra Oh.
• Wendell & Wild: The titular duo are designed to be exaggerated demon versions of their voice actors, Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele.
• Minions and Minions: The Rise of Gru shows that before his Bald of Evil young Gru had a head full of black hair, making him look like a cartoonish, long-nosed Steve Carell.
• NIMONA (2023): Nimona and Ballister both bear a strong resemblance to their voice actors, Chloë Grace Moretz and Riz Ahmed.

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