CHARLES MARTINET
“I wanted Nintendo to have millions of sound files”
Charles Martinet
“Hello to all my fans at Retro Gamer, it’s-a-me Mario! Woohoo! Mamma mia, you number one. See you in my games!” Charles’ introduction as Mario is lively and animated, and he keeps up the pace. “It’s been one marvellous adventure after another,” he says, also describing many of the Mario games he voiced. “I’ve always tried to make interesting characters, be loving and fun and joyful, and the comedy always comes back on them, it’s just light and airy, never at somebody’s expense. It’s one of my most firm principles, comedy is never supposed to hurt, only to be joyful.”
How did you get into acting and voiceover work?
I was studying political science at UC Berkeley, and I had the greatest professor. I went back for my final year, and I couldn’t get into his class. I said, ‘Fine, I will do what anyone would do, I QUIT. I’ll go away and come back when I can take this class.’ And a friend of mine said, ‘Why don’t you come and take an acting class from me?’ And I said, ‘There is absolutely no way, I’m way too shy.’ And he says, ‘Oh come on, you’ll have fun, you don’t have to do anything if you don’t want to. Just go in, we’ll go and have lunch at the student cafeteria where they are learning to become Michelin starred chefs.’ And I said, ‘Lunch?’ That was it, the lunch got me. I enjoyed watching and listening to everyone, and then they said, ‘Go ahead and learn a monologue.’
I was shaking like a leaf, but somehow I reached the end of it, and everyone politely clapped, as you do in acting class, and [my friend] Lester said, ‘I want to know how it is you’re the only person of all of us that wasn’t
