Vanessa Marshall is an American voice actress, actress, singer, and model. She is well known for several voice roles, such as Irwin in Cartoon Network's The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy. She is also the daughter of actress Joan Van Ark and reporter John Marshall. She started voice acting after being discovered during a solo performance.
Career[]
Prior to her career as a voice actor, Marshall attended Princeton University, majoring in English. She then attended graduate school at the New York University Tisch School of the Arts, attaining a masters in acting and learning different dialects, which Marshall credits for helping her in her voiceover career. She started voice acting after being discovered by a voice acting agent during a solo performance, where she was playing 15 different characters. One of her best known roles is her voice acting for the character Hera Syndulla in Star Wars Rebels. She reprised the role in Star Wars: The Bad Batch.
In July 2021, Marshall described Hera as a "strong, iconic female character", said that she brought together all the elements in her life into her voice acting as Hera, and argued that Hera became inspirational for her. Previously, she stated, in a April 2016 interview, that she brought her "convictions and... open heart" to each session in which she recorded as Hera, including her study of martial arts, and said the original Star Wars film in 1977 had a "huge impact" on her. In another interview, in March 2016, said she "secretly dedicated" her performance as Hera to her father, who is a pilot, noted her use of French language skills in the show, and joked that Sabine Wren was her "favorite character" in Rebels.