Darin De Paul
Darin De Paul is an actor, born 1960.
Video games made him, which is unusual for a voice actor of his generation. De Paul is Dr. Samuel Hayden in Doom and Doom Eternal, Reinhardt in Overwatch, Ardyn Izunia in Final Fantasy XV, Emperor Valkorion in Star Wars: The Old Republic, Revenant in Apex Legends, and J. Jonah Jameson in the Marvel's Spider-Man games. That is a remarkable run of parts for one instrument, and the instrument is the point: an enormous, theatrical, faintly amused baritone that sounds like it was trained for opera and got bored.
What separates him from other big voices is that he plays the joke and the threat at the same time. Reinhardt is a walking suit of armour with the enthusiasm of a labrador, and the performance is funny without ever being a send-up. Jameson is a man shouting into a radio microphone about a menace nobody else can see, and the comedy comes from how completely he believes it. Given a genuine villain, he simply removes the warmth and leaves the size.
The screen credits fill in around that. He started anonymously in animation, additional voices in Ice Age and Robots, then built a second home in the DC animated films: Brainiac twice over, Lex Luthor and Starro, Thomas Wayne, Solovar. Elsewhere he is Quan Chi in Mortal Kombat Legends, the Executioner in What If...?, Bog in Amphibia, Stonefell in The Legend of Vox Machina, and a guest at the Critical Role table. He is frequently the best thing in a mediocre direct-to-streaming animated feature, which is a compliment with a bruise on it.
Movies (15)
- Ice Age (2002)
- Mortal Kombat Legends: Scorpion's Revenge (2020)
- Robots (2005)
- The Witcher: Sirens of the Deep (2025)
- Resident Evil: Vendetta (2017)
- Batman: The Doom That Came to Gotham (2023)
- Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths Part Two (2024)
- Batman and Superman: Battle of the Super Sons (2022)
- DC Showcase - Batman: Death in the Family (2020)
- Legion of Super-Heroes (2023)
- Justice Society: World War II (2021)
- Big City Greens the Movie: Spacecation (2024)
- Top Cat Begins (2015)
- DC Showcase: Death (2019)
- No Time for Nuts (2006)
TV (9)
Where to start with Darin De Paul
If you know him from games, Apex Legends is the shortest route to why: Revenant is the coldest reading in his catalogue and the furthest from the boisterous stuff.
On screen, start with Mortal Kombat Legends: Scorpion's Revenge, where Quan Chi gives him a proper sneering sorcerer to chew on and the film is happy to let him. Batman: The Doom That Came to Gotham is the better film of the DC batch and casts him against type as Thomas Wayne, which is the most restrained work here.
For the comic register, Amphibia and The Legend of Vox Machina both use the size of the voice as a punchline, and Critical Role shows him improvising in character for hours at a stretch, which is the rarest thing on this list. What If...? and Justice Society: World War II are quick Marvel and DC stops. Batman and Superman: Battle of the Super Sons is for the Luthor completists only.