Nolan Ramsey North (born October 31, 1970) is an American actor and voice actor born in New Haven, Connecticut. Although he's been in the business for a while, it wasn't until his post-Uncharted roles that he started to gain prominence due to his rather distinctive voice. Most of the characters he voices are average people who find themselves in really bad situations and cope with them using a good heaping of sarcasm, but he's racked up quite a few Crazy is Cool flamboyant villains, as well.
He does have range, but he's still usually asked to do his "Drake" voice. In Singularity, this is actually used to throw the player off, whereas his role in Spec Ops: The Line deconstructs it.
From the inception of the award, to its resigning North swept Giant Bomb's "Northies".
He seems to be Marvel's go-to guy for voicing Deadpool. He's one of two alliteration-named actors to play both Green Lantern and Deadpool, the other being Ryan Reynolds.
On Thursdays, North co-hosts Retro Replay, a retro-gaming channel, with fellow voice actor Troy Baker. In April 2019, Rooster Teeth partnered up with the show. Unfortunately in April 2020, after an apparent disagreement with the future direction of the channel, Baker left to form his own channel. Nolan still continues the host the channel, albeit with a rotating series of guests. Furthermore, as a result of Baker's departure, he announced that Retro Replay would be ending its partnership with Rooster Teeth.
Nolan North's roles in alphabetical order:
- Alpha Protocol: Steven Heck
- The Amazing Spider-Man: Alistair Smythe
- Ape Escape 3: Dr. Tomoki
- Area 51: McCan
- Armored Core 4: Sherring
- Armored Core 5: Father, Zodiac #7
- Ar tonelico II: Melody of Metafalica: Shun, the Noble Wolf that serves the goddess.
- Army of Two: The 40th Day: Elliot Salem
- The Assassin's Creed series: Desmond Miles, Abbas Sofian and The Reader
- The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes: Balder, Jimmy Woo, Piledriver, Chemistro, and Living Laser.
- Batman and Superman: Battle of the Super Sons: Jor-El
- Batman: Arkham City: The Penguin, Black Mask.
- Batman: Arkham Origins: The Penguin
- Batman: Arkham Knight: The Penguin
- Black Panther: Cyclops.
- Blaze and the Monster Machines: Blaze
- Breadwinners: Oonski the Great
- Call of Duty 2: Sergeant Randall
- Call of Duty: Zombies: Doctor Edward Richtofen, Brutus, Stanley Ferguson, Gersh
- Cartoon Network: Punch Time Explosion: Captain K'nuckles, Father
- The Cat in the Hat: The Fish.
- Crash Bandicoot : Doctor N. Gin in the Radical Entertainment games (also voiced Tiny Tiger and Dingodile in the Nintendo DS version of Crash of the Titans)
- Dark Void: Will Grey
- Deadpool (2013): Deadpool, Himself
- Destiny: Ghost, replacing Peter Dinklage as of The Taken King.
- Destiny 2: Ghost, Cayde-6, replacing Nathan Fillion for Forsaken.
- DiRt 5: Bruno Durand
- Dota 2: Brewmaster, Earth Spirit, Gyrocopter, Keeper of the Light, Lone Druid, Lycanthrope, Meepo, Ogre Magi, Shadow Demon and Troll Warlord
- Dragons: Riders of Berk: Stoick the Vast
- Fanboy and Chum Chum: Thorvald the Red
- Final Fantasy XII: Vossler
- Gears of War 2: Jayson "Jace" Stratton
- Generator Rex: Branden Moses
- G.I. Joe: Renegades: Snow Job
- Guardians of the Galaxy: The Telltale Series: Rocket Raccoon
- Guild Wars 2: Male Human PC, Mordremoth, Palawa Joko.
- God of War: Hades (first game only)
- God of War (PS4): Modi
- Halo 3: ODST: Romeo
- Halo Wars: Sergeant John Forge
- Haven: Will Brady
- Hero Club: Ike Wheeler, Shae Dempsey, Commandant Helmut Wulf
- I Know That Voice: Himself
- Infinite Crisis: Atomic Green Lantern, Atomic Joker
- Injustice: Gods Among Us: General Zod
- Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths: Green Lantern/Hal Jordan, and Power Ring
- The Last of Us: David. REALLY Playing Against Type.
- LEGO Dimensions: General Zod, Space Core, Adventure Core, Boromir, Lord Business
- LittleBigPlanet 3: Marlon Random
- Mafia III: Remy Duvall
- Marvel's Avengers: Tony Stark/Iron Man
- Marvel Rivals: Rocket Raccoon
- Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order: Rocket Raccoon, in addition to Deadpool.
- Monsters vs. Aliens (2013): Derek Dietl (The Other Darrin for Paul Rudd)
- Mobile Legends: Bang Bang: Nolan
- Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 2: Tobi. Severely Playing Against Type.
- Odin Sphere: Brom, King Edmund and Onyx
- Playstation All Stars Battle Royale: Nathan Drake
- Pluto: Adolf Haas
- Portal 2: The defective turrets and cores.
- The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim: The Space Core, in the official mod, "Fall of the Space Core, Vol. 1"
- Poker Night 2: The Paranoia Core
- Port Charles: Dr. Chris Ramsey
- Power Rangers: Super Legends: Goldar and the Red Overdrive Ranger.
- Pretty Little Liars: Peter Hastings
- Prince of Persia (2008): The Prince
- Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time: Sigmund and Nefarious Troopers
- Resonance of Fate: Vashyron
- Saints Row 2: Additional Voices
- Saints Row IV: Boss voice 7: Nolan North
- Saints Row: Gat Out of Hell: The Boss (default voice)
- Scooby-Doo! and the Curse of the 13th Ghost - Asmodeus, Mortifer, Farmer Morgan
- Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated: Young Brad Chiles
- Shadow Complex: Jason Fleming
- Singularity: Devlin
- Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time: El Jefe and Cyrille Le Paradox
- Spec Ops: The Line: Captain Martin Walker, deconstructing the type of character North usually plays so thoroughly that it can actually be a little weird playing other games that feature him.
- Star Wars: The Old Republic: The male Jedi Consular.
- Star Trek Into Darkness: One of Admiral Marcus' subordinates.
- Supreme Commander 2
- Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League: Clark Kent/Superman
- SWAT 4: Officer Anthony "Subway" Girard.
- Tales from the Borderlands: August
- Team Fortress 2: Merasmus, The Bombinomicon, Redmond and Blutarch Mann, as well as their father, Zepheniah
- Played The Other Darrin in the short Expiration Date for all of Engineer's and some of Soldier's lines.
- TMNT: Raphael
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012): The Kraang
- Transformers: Dark of the Moon - The Game: Major Reynolds
- Transformers Earthspark: Swindle, Hardtop
- Transformers: Prime: Smokescreen and Skylynx
- Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen - The Game: Omnibot Scout 2, Sideswipe
- The Transformers: Titans Return - Metroplex
- Transformers: War for Cybertron: Brawl
- Transformers: Fall of Cybertron: Cliffjumper, Brawl once again, and Bruticus.
- Trauma Team: CR-S01
- Ultimate Avengers and its sequel: Hank Pym/Giant-Man
- Uncharted series: Nathan Drake
- Unreal Tournament III: Bishop
- Wolverine and the X-Men (2009): Cyclops, Pyro, Colossus, and Berzerker. Would've reprised Deadpool in the un-produced second season.
- XCOM 2: War of the Chosen: The Chosen Hunter.
- Young Justice (2010): Superboy, Superman, Kru-El, Zatara, Baron Bedlam, Clayface, Marvin White, Ronal, Lightray, Monsieur Mallah.
Tropes frequently used for this actor's roles:
- Action Genre Hero Guy: Having played a wide variety of video games protagonists, a lot of them happen to be the same template of generic badass man. Alongside Troy Baker, he is so prevalent in this kind of role that it's almost a requirement for this trope.
- Acting for Two: Considering his versatile range, there are times where he ends up playing multiple characters in a given work. This includes additional less significant voices in other projects not listed on this page. Specific examples include:
- Dota 2: North plays a whopping ten characters, which can result in a game where all the characters involved are voiced by him.
- Deadpool (2013) has him play the titular character, his two internal voices, and even himself when Deadpool tries to call him up in order to get him to be his voice actor in the video game.
- Young Justice (2010), where he plays both Superman and Superboy who occasionally interact.
- Adam Westing: He knows that public perception of him is painted by his portrayal of Large Ham Motor Mouth characters. He leans into this with characters like Deadpool (who takes a moment to calls up his high-strung voice actor. His self-acknowledgement gets taken to its logical extent in Saints Row IV, where one of the male voice options is simply: "Nolan North".
- The Cameo: Nolan got his cameo in Star Trek Into Darkness because the director, J. J. Abrams, is a huge fan of Uncharted.
- I Am Not Spock: Many of North's roles following Uncharted had him playing some sort of everyman. Unlike most instances of this trope, though, he doesn't hate or try to distance himself from those roles.
- Large Ham: As Dr. Edward Richtofen, Deadpool and Merasmus.
- Man of a Thousand Voices: Mentioned numerous times.
- Deadpool (2013) has fun with this trope, with North playing the titular merc, the voices in his head, and himself.
- Just look at his portfolio at Dota 2, tons of heroes with different personalities, all voiced by himself. Not to mention one of them constantly is Talking to Themself and using two opposite voices: utter high pitched and low Dumb Muscle (Ogre Magi). In fact, it's possible to play a game where everyone, including the announcer, is voiced by Nolan North.
- Playing Against Type:
- Tobi, in Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 2, both because he gets to bust out his deep bass bad guy voice and because it was the first time he voiced an anime character which he wouldn't do again until he voiced Adolf Haas in Pluto over a decade later.
- He's damn near unrecognizable in Portal 2 due in part to his voice being digitally processed. Though Rick the Adventure Sphere sounds a lot like a caricature of Nathan Drake. And his role as Steven Heck and Deadpool are a far cry from his regular characters.
- Edward Richtofen.
- The Penguin.
- Black Mask, in the same vein. Both characters have distinctive but realistic accents (Cockney and slightly Italian-American), which must have been hell to get right individually, let alone both.
- David definitely counts.
- His roles as Brawl and Bruticus, since he doesn't usually play The Brute.
- Cyclops on Wolverine and the X-Men (and a few video games) and Superman on Young Justice may also count, since neither of them are what you would call "average guys". They weren't exactly at their best on those shows but that's not the point.
- Balder the Brave on The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes! for another more straight laced traditional hero type role rather than stressed out average men. Balder didn't show up often but when he did you'd be hard pressed to guess that was North doing the deep, old school accented hero voice.
- Merasmus. He can do a damn good Vincent Price impersonation.
- And the fact that he can do a pitch perfect Mickey Mouse!
- Had a rare live-action role in several episodes of Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide, where he played an Andy Warhol-esque art teacher.
- His role as Remy Duvall, a Pompous Political Pundit and the leader of a KKK Expy in Mafia III definitely counts.
- Playing with Character Type: His typical role is Deconstructed, like every other Action Game trope, in Spec Ops: The Line with his role as Captain Martin Walker. Word of God says that Nolan was hired as Captain Walker for his versatility because he gave the best audition, and it wasn't until after they started recording that North Fever really started and they realized all the player-ribbing they could do with one of the most recognizable Action Genre Hero Guy voices in the industry.
- Pigeonholed Voice Actor: Considered this in that his most well-known roles tend to be The Everyman in some way. However, he also plays a lot of Deadpan Snarkers, with some crazy villains here and there for good measure.
- The Real Heroes: He did a book on the creation of Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception because he felt that the developers themselves deserved more recognition than him and he felt somewhat guilty about how little he knew of actual game development.
- Serkis Folk: Not only does he voice Drake, but he also supplies Mocap for him. He even cites Andy Serkis as something of a personal hero.
- Significant Birth Date: Halloween. Naturally Valve had a lot of fun with this by casting him as every single Halloween event character in Team Fortress 2.
- Star-Making Role: As Nathan Drake.
- Throw It In!:
- The "Aw, kitty got wet" taunt from Uncharted 2: Among Thieves came from his son while the two were playing Wii Tennis.note
- Around 90% of Deadpool's dialogue in Hulk Vs. was improvised by Nolan.
- What Could Have Been: Was very close to becoming Wayne Allwine's successor as the voice of Mickey Mouse until Disney decided to choose someone that could keep up with the demanding schedule and settled on Bret Iwan.
- Was actually a replacement for a different actor as Deadpool for Hulk Vs.