Artt Butler

Being half-Japanese and half-Mexican, you'd think his parents set out to genetically engineer the ultimate landscaper. Massive fail. Alas, voiceover industry veteran, Artt Butler has been kickin' around VO in one form or another since the early 1990s, way back when auditions were recorded in-person at the talent agency on ¼ inch reel-to-reel and submitted on cassette via FedEx. The journey started as receptionist and office manager of Sandie Schnarr Talent (now AVO) voiceover agency. After a few years of answering phones and typing cassette j-cards, in 1994, Sandie asked if he wanted to be an agent. This was an era where half the day was spent on telephones agenting, the other half spent in headphones directing talent in the VO booth. He accepted that "ask" and immediately found that as awkwardly terrible he was as an agent, he had an uncanny intuitive insight as a director. Realizing this, he had an "ask" of his own: Could he just stay in the booth... and not be an agent? Unheard of at the time, there were no "booth directors" at talent agencies back then. But in her genius fore-sight, and his never ending gratitude, Sandie bucked the system and allowed Artt to be the first dedicated booth director. So, as the lead booth director at one of L.A.'s top voiceover agencies, he quickly became a talent favorite because he spoke Actor fluently and was able to give concise, media-savvy, on-target direction without making voice actors crazy. Which had them leaving the booth feeling good about themselves, accomplishing their best performance possible, and most importantly, booking work! While possessing his own secret skill-set but having heart-pounding, dry-mouthing stage fright, performing voiceover himself seemed unthinkable. But after 15 years of directing and coaching the some of the best (and... not so best) talent in Hollywood, in 2008 he decided maybe it might be time to push through his "stupid nerves" and give it a try. Taking all that had been learned from the amazing talent he had directed over the years, he has parlayed that into a successful and satisfying career on the other side of the glass, behind the mic, running the gamut from commercials, animation and video games, to feature films, sitcoms and promos. In 2009, a week after being Taft-Hartley'd into SAG he booked the global McDonald's/Avatar television campaign, a month later he became the national legal tag voice of Chrysler television and radio commercials. You can also hear him as a Jack Bauer-esqe anti-terrorism specialist Agent Jack Flowers on the season 3 finale of the critically acclaimed Adult Swim series The Boondocks. In 2011, a childhood dream of his came true after being welcomed into the Star Wars family playing everyone's favorite space-fish, the iconic Captain Ackbar in Star Wars: The Clone Wars. He will now have to utter the phrase "It's a TRAP!" for the rest of his life, for as it turns out, it is indeed a trap. And he wouldn't have it any other way. In 2013, he was heard by millions as the male computer voice in the Academy Award winning Spike Jonze film Her starring Joaquin Phoenix and Scarlett Johansson. Continuing in the A.I. realm, he was the voice of Ashton Kutcher's robot Wald-E in the 11th season finale of Two and a Half Men. He was also the national television brand voice of KIA, launching them into the luxury sedan market with the 2014 Cadenza and the redesigned 2014 Optima. He can currently be heard as the fun-loving patriarch of the Diaz family as Rafael Diaz on Disney's hit Star vs. The Forces of Evil, promoting the benefits of Top-Tier gas as the voice of Arco, and in the promo world as the voice of DirecTV's Audience network. In April 2020, he portrayed the fan-fave baddy Shang Tsung in the eagerly awaited animated feature Mortal Kombat Legends: Scorpion's Revenge. With multiple exciting projects still on the horizon which can't yet be revealed due to NDA restrictions, he CAN reveal, with conviction, that this whole voice acting thing is working out quite nicely for which he has boundless gratitude. Because much to his DNA's chagrin, he wouldn't be able to keep a basic house plant alive if western civilization depended on it.