8 Famous Voice Actors Who Are LGBTQ+ (2024)

Voice actors are a huge part of the video game experience these days; it feels like more games have voice acting than don't. Once you play enough games, you start to recognize voices you've heard before, developing favourite actors that you become excited to see attached to new projects.

We thought it would be good to celebrate some of the best LGBTQ+ voice actors during Pride Month to raise the profile of queer performers in the video game and anime industry.

1 Erica Lindbeck

Erica Lindbeck is a titan of modern voice acting who came out as bisexual in 2020. Her acting credits on IMDb have over 250 distinct entries, far too many to list here. Highlights include Black Cat from Marvel's Spider-Man, Cassie Cage from Mortal Kombat 11, Fuataba Sakura from Persona 5, and she's even one of the player character voices in Helldivers 2. She's also active in animation, portraying Loona from Helluva Boss and Lady Nagant in My Hero Academia, among others.

Erica dropped the information about her sexuality in a tweet, back when they were still called that, which read "I feel I need to state this openly as well, because I feel that our words have weight in this life. I am absolutely, 100 percent Bi. Have a nice night.". Erica was completely correct with her 2020 statement: words do have weight, and it's always inspiring to see someone living as their authentic self.

2 Greg Ayres

Although Greg Ayres is primarily a dub voice actor for anime (LGBT or otherwise), he does regularly provide the voices for his characters in video game adaptations too, such as voicing both Guldo and Frost in the many Dragonball video games. Outside of that, he is uncannily prolific. You'll recognize his voice in shows like Overlord, SSSS.Gridman, One Piece, and Fairy Tail.

Openly gay, Greg Ayres is a mainstay of the anime voice-acting world. It would be an exaggeration to say if you've watched a dubbed anime, he was in it, but it wouldn't be far off. Worth noting is that he's the brother of Christopher Ayres, who tragically passed away in 2021, best known for voicing Frieza in DragonBall Z Kai and DragonBall Super. It adds a certain poignancy to Greg voicing that character's Universe 6 counterpart, Frost.

3 Maile Flanagan

Few voice actors have had a role as enduring as Maile Flanagan, voicing Naruto Uzumaki in all of his appearances. Between television episodes, movies, and video games, there are hundreds of hours of content. It's the sort of gig any actor would be thrilled to land, but Maile Flanagan has also worked in live-action, appearing in shows like Modern Family and Lab Rats.

Maile Flanagan is a lesbian who married her wife Lesa Hammett in 2008. That the voice of so many people's childhood hero is an openly queer person shows just how far representation has come. Naruto's signature raspy voice might have some fans jokingly wondering how many cigarettes a young boy would have to smoke to sound like that, but it also undeniably fits the character's early brashness. Eventually, he aged into the voice, and Maile softened her performance, adding emotional depth.

4 Taliesin Jaffe

Taliesin Jaffe is undoubtedly best known for his work with Critical Role, portraying beloved characters like Percival Fredrickstein von Musel Klossowski de Rolo III, Caduceus Clay, and Ashton Greymoore at the table. Like everyone on Critical Role, Taliesin Jaffe was a voice actor before he was a phenomenon, voicing characters like The Flash in Injustice 2 or Blanka in Street Fighter.

Taliesin Jaffe is bisexual and has a clear interest in exploring other sexualities and gender identities through his D&D characters. Ashton Greymoore, his Campaign 3 Critical Role character, uses he/they pronouns, and his Campaign 2 character, Caduceus Clay, is asexual. Tabletop roleplaying games are a great vehicle for exploring different sexualities or gender identities through your characters, learning what does and doesn't resonate with you, and Taliesin is a champion of this.

5 Chris Patton

Chris Patton came out publically as a gay man in a 2013 interview, already well-established as a voice-over actor by that time. He has worked on some of the biggest franchises of all time. Credits include Turles in DragonBall Z, Greed in Fullmetal Alchemist, the ever-lazy Lindhart in Fire Emblem: Three Houses, and hundreds of other roles across anime and video games. He has also narrated over eighty audiobooks, clocking in a huge number of voiceover hours across his career.

Outside of his acting career, Chris has fronted a synthpop band called Paul Lynde Is Dead and wrote an emo scene vampire young adult novel titled Scene Immortal. It released in 2011 and was slated to be part one of a trilogy, with no sequels ever appearing. Still, writing a book is a huge accomplishment, and it makes for a fantastic piece of trivia about one of the best voice actors around.

6 Brock Powell

Brock Powell is engaged to actress Camryn Grimes, best known for her work on The Young and the Restless. That doesn't negate his identity as a bisexual man, however; a person is no less bisexual for being with a partner of the opposite sex. Brock may not have the soap opera credits of his partner, but he has a steadily growing catalog of voice-over work that shows his range.

Brock has voiced Regulus in Octopath Traveller 2, Hanbei the Undying in Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice and has become a regular voice actor for works by Disney, most notably the Mickey Mouse Funhouse television show where he voices enough characters to make up the cast of an entire tv show by themselves.

7 J. Michael Tatum

If you're wondering what you might know J. Michael Tatum from, it's almost everything. The man has over 400 acting credits to his name, a truly astronomical amount. Some of the many highlights include Cid Highwind in the Final Fantasy 7 Remake, Hammerlock from Borderlands, Tenya Iida in My Hero Academia, Louis in Fire Emblem: Engage, and Erwin Smith from the English dub of Attack On Titan.

J. Michael Tatum is gay, openly discussing his sexuality in interviews and on panels. He's engaged to fellow voice actor Brandon McInnis, who you might know as the male Alear in Fire Emblem: Engage or Sir Nighteye from My Hero Academia.

8 Ashly Burch

Ashly Burch feels like one of those people who is too cool to be real. She burst onto the internet scene with her comedic series, Hey Ash, Whatcha Playin, and blessed us all with the beloved Tiny Tina from the Borderlands series. She brought Chloe Price from Life Is Strange to life and then blew expectations out of the water with her work as Aloy in Horizon Zero Dawn and Horizon Forbidden West, helping portray a character who has become one of the greatest video game heroines of all time.

Outside of voice acting, Ashly is prominent in the D&D scene, making multiple appearances on shows like Critical Role. She also shows off her live-action acting chops in Mythic Quest, where she plays a video game tester for an MMO developer. In her personal life, Ashly Burch came out as queer and pansexual in 2022, saying that coming out felt important for reasons she couldn't really explain. It certainly was important. Knowing that one of the top professionals in the industry is queer is something that not only inspires but brings hope to young queer people hoping to make their way in the same profession.