Pierre-Alain de Garrigues, the man with 45,000 voices

As a female voice over artist for more than 20 years, I meet a great many talented people. Some impress me, others inspire me. And then there are those who remind you why you do what you do, why this profession stays so alive despite everything that shakes it. Pierre-Alain de Garrigues is one of them. That is what made me want to write this portrait and invite him to my Apéro Voice.

What fascinates me about him is his creative madness: an inner energy, a rare frankness in an industry where people often weigh every word, and complete freedom in the way he lives. The man with 45,000 voices is also the man with 50,000 projects. And I admit it: he is rather handsome.

Nothing seemed to predestine Pierre-Alain de Garrigues for voice acting: neither Cours Florent nor the Conservatoire. His path took him through philosophy at the University of Besançon. That makes me smile: I studied literature at the same university a few years later.

Before philosophy, though, there was music. Pierre-Alain is a professional drummer and singer. That dual grounding, rhythmic and intellectual, shaped the actor he became: a performer with distinctive phrasing and an instinct for the tempo of a script.

1985. PADG is working in a Paris studio. Next door, director and advertising filmmaker Jean Becker is tearing his hair out: his actor cannot get through the script for the new Justin Bridou commercial.

“La juste sèche de Justin Bridou, une saucisse sèche sachant sécher doit sécher sans s’assécher” (a French tongue twister about dry sausage drying without drying out)

A formidable French tongue twister. Jean Becker runs into Pierre-Alain and asks him to try it. Three takes, and it is in the can. The next day, Danone asks for him. That is the beginning: PADG will never leave the microphone behind.

It is hard to sum up nearly forty years without feeling dizzy. Tic Tac? That is him, and he did more than voice the spots: he wrote the songs himself. Carte Noire? Him again. The energy behind Kellogg’s cereals for more than fifteen years? Also him. He has been heard on Canal+’s Les Guignols de l’info, and for years he has been a signature voice of Radio Classique and Radio Vinci Autoroutes.

The nickname “Monsieur Pub”, or Mr Advertising, is well earned. What impresses me is not the quantity, although 45,000 recordings does take some getting your head around. It is his range. The sensuality of Carte Noire, the exuberant madness of Tic Tac, and somewhere between the two, he sings. That richness is fascinating.

Perhaps it is in video games that PADG has left his most lasting mark. He is Adibou: for those who grew up in the nineties, that voice sits somewhere between childhood memory and digital nostalgia. In Hearthstone, he was the Innkeeper, the warm French voice welcoming millions of players to each game from 2014 to 2018. In League of Legends, he voices Kled, Heimerdinger and Rammus; in Rayman, Globox; in World of Warcraft, Muradin. He can also be heard in Little Big Adventure and Oblivion.

His range takes him from a childlike character to a dwarven warrior, from an elderly man’s voice to a creature’s scream, with an ease that comes as much from his musicality, developed long before the microphone, as from sheer talent. His character demo is the finest I have ever heard: created especially for him, with animation showing versions of PADG in all sorts of situations.

Pierre-Alain de Garrigues has been replaced by artificial intelligence on major video game franchises, including Call of Duty. He does not dwell on it or complain: he creates. His response is music, with three funk albums in preparation, including one with his daughter. It is also the narration of “L’Esprit de Dunkerque”, a show combining more than 600 drones, pyrotechnics and visual poetry. He never stands still.

I recognise in him a conviction I share: the more perfect a synthetic voice (in French) becomes, the more alive, creative and full of feeling we need to be. PADG goes where technology cannot: into constant invention, creative madness and raw humanity.

Beyond his career, what touches me is his undimmed freshness. His emotional intelligence comes straight through. A little fast, a little wild, intensely sensitive: the kind of person whose creativity in every direction makes you want to create too.