Adrian Petriw
Adrian Petriw is an actor, born 1987.
Born in Toronto in 1987, Adrian Petriw built his career in the Vancouver voice booth, the industrial centre of North American children's animation and one of the least glamorous good jobs in the business. His first voice role was Hawkeye in the direct-to-video Next Avengers: Heroes of Tomorrow, and the work has not stopped since.
The signature part is Tony Stark in Iron Man: Armored Adventures, a series that reimagines the character as a teenager, which is a harder assignment than it sounds. The whole point of Stark is an adult's arrogance, and playing that at school age without making him insufferable takes judgement. Petriw's other lasting roles are Gren in The Dragon Prince, the steady, decent second in command who exists to make everyone around him look reckless, and Adam in The Hollow.
Then there is the other column, the one voice actors leave off the poster and probably should not: Ken across three Barbie features, plus princes and a pop star in two more. Doing that well means taking a deliberately weightless character seriously, and the Barbie films of that period are better made than their reputation allows. Alongside the animation he has taken live-action guest parts in series including Arrow, Lucifer, iZombie, Van Helsing and Legends of Tomorrow, which is the standard second income for a booth actor in that city.
Movies (8)
TV (9)
Where to start with Adrian Petriw
Nothing here beats Iron Man: Armored Adventures as an entry point, and it holds up better than a licensed cartoon has any right to, largely because the writing takes the teenage Stark seriously. Petriw carries it.
If you want the better show rather than the better-known role, go to The Dragon Prince, where Gren is a small part played with enough warmth that the character became a favourite well beyond his screen time, and then The Hollow, a puzzle-box adventure series with a genuinely strange premise.
For the range, Next Avengers: Heroes of Tomorrow is where it started, Ninjago: Masters of Spinjitzu and LEGO Star Wars: Droid Tales cover the licensed toy work, and Barbie: A Fashion Fairytale is the pick of the Barbie run, the one where Ken is written with an actual sense of humour.