You've Definitely Seen These Movies — You Just Never Clocked Who Was Voicing The Cartoon

Batman Voiced A Studio Ghibli Wizard — And Basically Begged For The Job

Christian Bale didn't audition for Howl's Moving Castle so much as will it into existence. He'd fallen so hard for Spirited Away that he told Studio Ghibli he'd take literally any part just to be involved — and ended up landing the lead romantic role instead of some background villager.

Mad Max Was A Wisecracking Circus Rooster And Nobody Talks About It

Before he was dodging car chases, Mel Gibson was the smooth-talking American rooster Rocky in Aardman's stop-motion classic Chicken Run. Director Sam Fell later called the casting perfect for its era, saying Gibson was a movie star playing a movie-star rooster — which is exactly why the 2023 sequel replaced him entirely with Zachary Levi once the character's story (and the times) had changed.

Wolverine Spent A Whole Movie As A Posh Pet Rat

Hugh Jackman traded the claws for a waistcoat to voice Roddy St. James, a pampered Kensington pet rat flushed into the London sewers, in Aardman and DreamWorks' Flushed Away. He even got to sing in the role, going full musical-theater mode years before The Greatest Showman.

John Wick Became A Toy — And Pixar Didn't Even Realize It Was Him At First

Pixar ran a blind audio test for Toy Story 4's daredevil action figure Duke Caboom, playing anonymous voice clips from a batch of Canadian actors — and the room stopped when one clip came on, with director Josh Cooley recalling everyone yelling, "Wait, stop! Who is that?" It was Keanu Reeves, who then flew to Pixar's campus and literally jumped up on a lunch table striking action-figure poses to prove he understood the character.

Matt Damon Spent An Entire Movie Being A Horse — Without Ever Actually Talking

In DreamWorks' Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron, Matt Damon voices the wild mustang Spirit — but not through dialogue, since the horses in the film never actually speak. Instead, Damon narrates Spirit's inner thoughts as a voiceover, making it one of the sneakiest "starring role" animation credits ever handed to a movie star.