Susan Egan
Susan Egan is an actor, born 1970.
Egan originated Belle in the 1994 Broadway production of Beauty and the Beast, which for most performers would be the headline for life. Instead she is best known to two entirely separate audiences who largely do not realise they are listening to the same person: viewers who grew up on Hercules, and viewers who grew up on Steven Universe.
Meg in Hercules (1997) is the sharpest work she has done. The role could easily have been another Disney romantic lead and Egan plays it instead as a woman who is deeply tired, using wisecracks as armour and refusing to admit anything, right down to her one big number, which is a song about denial sung by someone who means it. The sarcasm is not a layer applied on top of the singing; it is inside the singing.
Rose Quartz in Steven Universe asked for the opposite: warm, unhurried, faintly sad, heard across that series and again in Steven Universe Future. She has also worked steadily in English dubs of Japanese animation, including Madame Gina in Porco Rosso and Lin in Spirited Away, and returned to Megara repeatedly for the Hercules television series and assorted Disney spin-offs.
Live action is the thin part of the record: Teek in Galaxy Quest, Tracy Hansen in 13 Going on 30, a couple of short-lived sitcoms. The stage and the microphone are where this career actually lives.
Movies (8)
TV (6)
Where to start with Susan Egan
Hercules first, and listen rather than watch: Meg's line readings are the whole argument for Egan, dry and clipped in a film where everything else is enormous.
If that lands, Steven Universe is the other essential, though it is a slow-building children's series and her role sits inside a much larger structure; Steven Universe Future carries it on. The Hercules television series and Hercules: Zero to Hero are for completists, pleasant and thin.
The live-action credits are a curiosity rather than a career, but Galaxy Quest is a great comedy that she has a small part in, and 13 Going on 30 is the other one people have seen. For pure singing, Lady and the Tramp II: Scamp's Adventure gives her a proper vocal turn, and her dub work on Porco Rosso and Spirited Away is worth chasing down separately.