Roger Craig Smith

From Stand-Up Stages to the Recording Booth

Roger Craig Smith never planned to become the voice of an entire generation of gamers when he took the stage in California to perform stand-up comedy. It was 2004 and his goal was the live comedy circuit. But fate has strange ways of showing up, and he ended up in a recording booth dubbing supporting anime characters.

Comedy was her school of survival.

In 2005, he provided his voice for the English version of Naruto. That was the first rung of a ladder he climbed without looking back. Because Smith doesn't have one of those voices you recognize right away on the street. He has a rare ability to disappear behind the script so that the viewer never notices it's him.

The Man of a Thousand Voices

In 2009, the role that changed his bank account and his standing in the industry arrived. Ubisoft was looking for a lead for Assassin’s Creed II, and he became Ezio Auditore da Firenze. He had to learn Italian phonetics and maintain that tone across three installments of the franchise.

Nobody expected a man from Michigan to sound so Florentine.

That same year, he worked on Resident Evil 5, voicing Chris Redfield. It was a period of brutal workload, where he chained motion-capture sessions with ten-hour voice recording sessions. The bet paid off, because sales of those titles surpassed ten million copies within a few months.

In 2010 he took on the challenge of playing the blue hedgehog in Sonic the Hedgehog. He is the actor who has held the role the longest in the history of the Sega franchise. But in January 2021 he announced he was leaving the character for reasons that were never fully made clear.

The community panicked.

Four months after that announcement, he confirmed his return for Sonic Frontiers. Smith quickly learned that in the world of corporate voice work, negotiations move as fast as the character he plays. But his career isn't limited to video game mascots.

The Challenge of Replacing the Untouchables

In 2013, he drew the short straw and was tasked with replacing Kevin Conroy in Batman: Arkham Origins. It was a risky move, because fans rarely accept changes to the voice of the Dark Knight. Smith chose a younger, angrier Batman who won over critics with his intensity.

He repeated the feat with Captain America in several Marvel animated series.

In 2019, he joined the cast of Apex Legends to play Mirage. This character let him reconnect with his comedy roots through improvised dialogue and the arrogant personality of the mercenary. Mirage is the character who is most like his real personality, according to what he has said in several technical interviews.

In 2024, he put the mask back on for Batman: Arkham Shadow for virtual reality systems. The video game industry relies on professionals who don't need their face on the poster to sell the product. Smith is paid per session and keeps a strict confidentiality agreement with every recording studio.