Paul Christie
Paul Christie is an actor.
Christie is a New Yorker who has spent more than three decades in booths. Most of that work is advertising: hundreds of radio and television spots for clients including Chrysler, Domino's, Pontiac, Canon, Calvin Klein and Budweiser, among them two characters people can still imitate without knowing whose voice they are imitating, Louie the Lizard for Budweiser and Vinnie the Panda for Fox's Biscuits.
The screen credits are a smaller and odder set. He voiced a ram in Brother Bear and a germ in Osmosis Jones, and he was C.A.R.R., the talking car, in the animated comedy Stroker and Hoop, which is the closest thing here to a proper comic part.
His most-heard work, though, is narration. He narrates Gold Rush for Discovery and has carried the same voice into its spin-offs. That is a specific skill, not a fallback: delivering a sentence about frozen gravel as though a fortune depends on it, week after week, for years, without ever sounding as though you have said it before.
Movies (2)
TV (4)
Where to start with Paul Christie
Voice careers are awkward to browse, because the best work is the work you do not notice. The honest entry point here is Gold Rush, where Christie is the narrator holding together a great deal of mud, machinery and bad weather. Put on an episode and listen for how much of the tension is carried by his pacing rather than by anything happening on screen.
For the animated side, Osmosis Jones is the better film and gives him something to play, while Brother Bear is the studio credit. Stroker and Hoop is the one to watch if you want him being funny on purpose; C.A.R.R. is a good bit and the show is a cult item rather than a lost classic.
Gold Rush: Parker's Trail and Gold Rush: Mine Rescue with Freddy & Juan are for viewers who already know which spin-off they want.