
The only thing more fun than knowing that the authoritative voice that growls
"This...is...CNN" belongs to
James Earl Jones is realizing that that
same voice - with a little sweetening - is also Darth Vader's. Who are some
of the other faceless voices we hear every day?
Elwood "El" Edwards,
54, is the man heard saying "You've got mail" to AOL customers more than
63 million times a day. Announcer Edwards met his wife in a chat room, and
she brought him to the attention of her bosses at AOL; the lovebirds exchanged
vows in an online wedding shortly before holding their offline one in 1998.
Liz Raphael Helgesen, 40, is the voice for T-Mobile, Cingular, and
Sprint; about one out of every four Americans hears her every day. A mother
of four, she runs her own voice-over company in Atlanta; her voice is insured
by Lloyd's of London. Baritone
Don Lafontaine, 62, has been narrating
movie trailers since the 1960s - longer than anyone else. Known in the business
as "The Voice of God," this former copywriter helped create the "In a world
where..." formula - which he somewhat regrets today.
Russ Leatherman, 42,
is Mr. Moviefone, whose apoplectic utterances have been parodied on
Seinfeld
and
The Simpsons. When he co-founded the Mr. Moviefone company in 1989,
he had a hard time attracting investors; 10 years later AOL bought it for
nearly $400 million. Hear them roar!