Charles Martinet

About

Charles Martinet is an American voice actor who is mostly known for being the voice of Mario, Luigi, Wario, and Waluigi from the Super Mario series of video games until his apparent retirement from the roles in 2023. He has received several fan tributes such as fan art and voice impersonations.

History

Charles was born in San Jose, California, on September 17th, 1955, and spent his teens living in Barcelona, Spain, and later in Paris, France, in which he learned Spanish and French respectively.^[1] After graduating from the American School of Paris he moved back to the United States to attend college at University of California's Berkeley campus to study international law. However, he was persuaded by a friend to attend acting classes to improve his public speaking abilities, and he later moved on to become an apprentice at Berkeley Repertory Theatre. Several years later, Charles would learn accents and dialects at Studio London in London, England, and later moved back to California to rejoin the Berkeley Repertory Theatre and later help found the San Jose Repertory Theatre.

Acting Career

Charles' professional acting career started in 1986 by playing the role of District Attorney Cobb in the film Hard Traveling, which first premiered on August 27th, 1986.^[1] He would also play other minor roles in live-action films throughout his acting career.

Voice Acting Career

In 1990, Charles was contacted by a friend to crash an audition at a consumer trade show in Las Vegas. The audition was for the MIRT^[2] (Mario in Real Time) interactive system which would be featured at later consumer trade shows.^[3] Charles slipped in at the end of the audition and pleaded to have his lines recorded. There, when told Mario was an Italian plumber from Brooklyn, Martinet forewent doing lines in a gruff tone and took inspiration from his role as Gremio from William Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew, a play in which he performed during his years at the San Jose Repertory Theatre, and talked in a high pitched elderly voice until the audition tape ran out. The producer was so impressed with his performance that his tape was the only one sent to Nintendo of Japan, which later got him the role. In various interviews (example shown below), Charles would retell the story of this audition.

Charles would later perform the role of Mario at consumer trade shows using a 3D model of Mario's head, as well as other characters such as Luigi and Wario (shown below, left). Charles' first videogame appearance as Mario was in the educational PC CD-Rom game Mario Teaches Typing, which was released in 1994.^[1] In the game, the 3D Mario head from the MIRT system would make a reappearance (shown below, right).

Charles would gain worldwide fame for being the voice of Mario in the Nintendo 64's debut title Super Mario 64, which was first released in Japan on June 23rd, 1996, and later in North America on September 29th, 1996.^[1] The game's title screen (shown below) uses a Mario head similar to the one used in the trade shows.

In addition to his voice roles at Nintendo, Charles has voiced other notable works such as Senator Wilson Philips in the 1994 Jojo's Bizarre Adventure OVA, and is the voice of Magenta in the 2022 anime film Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero.

Retirement From Voice Acting Mario Characters

On August 21st, 2023, Nintendo of America announced on Twitter^[4] that Charles Martinet would be retiring from his voicing acting roles in Nintendo games, and instead will become a "Mario Ambassador" (shown below)

Online Presence

Online, Martinet has been a beloved figure among video game fans and voice actors. On January 17th, 2017, Great Big Story did an episode focused on Martinet, gaining over 40 million views in six and a half years (shown below).

On his Instagram page, he used to post videos and overdub them with the Super Mario cast voices. A compilation of these videos was uploaded to YouTube on August 20th, 2017 by YouTuber Egassem Lanimilbus, gaining over 860,000 views in six years (shown below).

The announcement of Martinet's retirement from voicing the Super Mario cast members led to an outpouring of tributes and fan art on social media. For example, on August 21st, 2023, Twitter user @gabaghoulcomics^[5] posted art of Martinet with his characters, gaining over 1,400 retweets and 9,800 likes in three days (shown below, left). The same day, user @TheRealPoloBlue^[6] posted fan art of Martinet, Mario and Luigi, gaining over 3,300 retweets and 14,000 likes in three days (shown below, right).

Search Interest

External References