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Laura Bailey

Laura Bailey (born May 28, 1981) is an American voice actress. She made her voice acting debut as Kid Trunks in the Funimation dub of Dragon Ball Z and has since voiced Emily / Glitter Lucky in Glitter Force, Tohru Honda in Fruits Basket, Lust in Fullmetal Alchemist and Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, the title character in the Funimation dub of Shin-Chan, and Maka Albarn in Soul Eater. She is a cast member of the web series Critical Role, playing Vex'ahlia ("Vex"), Jester Lavorre, and Imogen Temult.

Bailey's video game voice roles include Rayne in the BloodRayne franchise, Kira Carsen in Star Wars: The Old Republic, Kainé in Nier, Jaina Proudmoore in World of Warcraft, Rise Kujikawa in Persona 4, the Female Protagonist in Persona 3 Portable, Chun-Li in Street Fighter, Serah Farron in Final Fantasy XIII, the title role in Catherine, Serana in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim – Dawnguard, Persephone in the Skylanders series, Oriana Lawson in Mass Effect 3, Lucina in Fire Emblem Awakening, Abigail "Fetch" Walker in Infamous Second Son and First Light, Fiona in Tales from the Borderlands, Nadine Ross in Uncharted 4: A Thief's End and The Lost Legacy, and Kait Diaz in Gears of War. For her voice role as Abby Anderson in the 2020 video game The Last of Us Part II, she won the BAFTA Award for Best Performer in a Leading Role and the Game Award for Best Performance, as well as received a nomination for the D.I.C.E. Award for Outstanding Achievement in Character.

Bailey has also voiced Catwoman in Batman: The Telltale Series, Supergirl in Injustice 2, Mary Jane Watson in the Marvel's Spider-Man series, and Black Widow in a number of Marvel projects (particularly the television series Avengers Assemble and the video game Marvel's Avengers).

Early life

Bailey was born in Mississippi on May 28, 1981. She has an older sister named Jenny. Her father was in the Air Force, causing the family to move around frequently. They lived in Oklahoma before moving to San Antonio, Texas, and then moved throughout North Texas, all before Bailey was six years old. They eventually settled in Allen, Texas, a suburb of Dallas. She had a passing interest in acting and performed in school plays, but was planning to become a biologist. She did not realize she could make a career out of acting until she watched a Dawson's Creek behind-the-scenes special in which Katie Holmes was interviewed. She attended the theatre program at Collin County Community College in Plano, Texas, where she participated in productions of the plays Suburbia, Through a Glass Onion, and Don't Rock the Jukebox.

Career

Voice acting

Voice actor Kent Williams spotted Bailey at one of her college plays and invited her to audition for Funimation while they were working on Dragon Ball Z. Her first major role on Dragon Ball Z was Kid Trunks, which she portrayed with a raspy voice. She voiced the starring character Marlene Angel in Blue Gender, which was the first project Funimation did outside of the Dragon Ball world, and Keiko Yukimura in Yu Yu Hakusho, which ran on Cartoon Network.

Bailey was cast for the starring role of Tohru Honda in the anime Fruits Basket. She said that Tohru's character has helped her be more positive: "I was so inspired by her character by her, joy, and outlook on life that, you know, you wanna emulate that." She later voiced Lust, one of the villains in Fullmetal Alchemist, and Sana Kurata in Kodocha.

Bailey had been working with Funimation for about four years before she started ADR directing. She worked on Blue Gender: The Warrior and some episodes of Case Closed. Her first major ADR directing project was Gunslinger Girl, in which she also voices Henrietta. She also co-directed parts of Kodocha. She became a line producer for the Funimation dub of Shin-Chan and also voiced the title character.

Bailey's video game voice roles include Rayne in the BloodRayne franchise, Jaina Proudmoore in World of Warcraft, Rise Kujikawa in Persona 4, the Female Protagonist in Persona 3 Portable, Chun-Li in Street Fighter, Serah Farron in Final Fantasy XIII, Blaze the Cat in Sonic the Hedgehog, the title role in Catherine, Serana in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim – Dawnguard, multiple characters in Fallout: New Vegas, Lucina in Fire Emblem Awakening, Abigail "Fetch" Walker in Infamous Second Son and First Light, Fiona in Tales from the Borderlands, Spartan Olympia Vale in Halo 5: Guardians, Nadine Ross in Uncharted 4: A Thief's End and The Lost Legacy, and Kait Diaz in Gears of War.

In 2020, Bailey starred as Abby Anderson in the video game The Last of Us Part II, a role which won her the BAFTA Award for Best Performer in a Leading Role and the Best Performance award at The Game Awards 2020, although she received death threats in response of the controversy and the character prior to that. In 2022, Bailey was nominated for Best VA Performance (EN) at the Crunchyroll Anime Awards.

Live action

In addition to her voice over roles, Bailey has also appeared in several live action productions. In 2001, she played a minor role in an episode of Walker, Texas Ranger (titled "Saturday Night") as the daughter of a club owner (Frank Stallone Jr.) with ties to the Mafia. She later had a brief appearance in an episode of One Tree Hill ("It gets worse at night"), which was filmed in Texas. She has appeared in the films Mr. Brooks, Ruffian, and The Staircase Murders.

Bailey is also a cast member of the popular Dungeons & Dragons web series Critical Role, where she played Vex'ahlia ("Vex") in Campaign One, Jester Lavorre in Campaign Two, and Imogen Temult (Campaign three.). Critical Role was both the Webby Winner and the People's Voice Winner in the "Games (Video Series & Channels)" category at the 2019 Webby Awards; the show was also both a Finalist and the Audience Honor Winner at the 2019 Shorty Awards. After becoming hugely successful, the Critical Role cast left the Geek & Sundry network in early 2018 and set up their own production company, Critical Role Productions. Soon after, they aimed to raise $750,000 on Kickstarter to create an animated series of their first campaign, but ended up raising over $11 million. In November 2019, Amazon Prime Video announced that they had acquired the streaming rights to this animated series, now titled The Legend of Vox Machina; Bailey reprises her role as Vex. Bailey is also one of the narrators for the audiobook edition of the novel Critical Role: Vox Machina – Kith & Kin (2021).

Bailey made an appearance in the season finale of HBO's live-action adaptation of The Last of Us in a cameo role as a Firefly nurse, a character she voiced in the original game.

Personal life

Bailey lived with voice actress Colleen Clinkenbeard while the two worked at Funimation in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

On September 25, 2011, Bailey married voice actor Travis Willingham in Camarillo, California. Having briefly dated when they were younger, they reconnected years later. They live in Los Angeles and have a son named Ronin (born June 30, 2018).