Michael Shapiro is an American

actor An actor or actress is a person who portrays a character in a performance. The actor performs "in the flesh" in the traditional medium of the theatre or in modern media such as film, radio, and television. The analogous Greek term is (), li ...

, and

theatre director A theatre director or stage director is a professional in the theatre field who oversees and orchestrates the mounting of a theatre production such as a play, opera, dance, drama, musical theatre performance, etc. by unifying various endeavors a ...

, best known for voicing the ''

Half-Life Half-life (symbol ) is the time required for a quantity (of substance) to reduce to half of its initial value. The term is commonly used in nuclear physics to describe how quickly unstable atoms undergo radioactive decay or how long stable ato ...

'' characters

G-Man ''G-man'' (short for "government man", plural ''G-men'') is an American slang term for special agent, agents of the United States Government. It is especially used as a term for an agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). ''G-man'' i ...

and

Barney Calhoun This is a list of characters in the ''Half-Life'' video game series, which comprises ''Half-Life'', ''Half-Life 2'', ''Half-Life: Alyx'', and their respective expansion packs and episodes. Introduced in ''Half-Life'' and expansion packs This sec ...

and the only voice actor who worked in all Half Life games.

Early life

In 1987, Shapiro helped launch the Annex Theater and performed in many of their productions. For a time he lived in

Seattle Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest regio ...

until moving to

Brooklyn, New York Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...

in 2000.

Career

Michael Shapiro is most famous for voicing

and the

in all of the characters' appearances in the ''Half-Life'' series. Other video games in which he is credited as "Mike Shapiro" are '' Blood II: The Chosen'', '' Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories'' and ''

Torin's Passage ''Torin's Passage'' is a point-and-click adventure game developed and published by Sierra On-Line in 1995. The game was designed by Al Lowe, author of the ''Leisure Suit Larry'' series. Gameplay The player interacts with Torin and the in-game e ...

''. He has also voiced many

radio Radio is the technology of signaling and communicating using radio waves. Radio waves are electromagnetic waves of frequency between 30 hertz (Hz) and 300 gigahertz (GHz). They are generated by an electronic device called a transmit ...

and TV commercials. Shapiro is a director of

television Television, sometimes shortened to TV, is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. The term can refer to a television set, or the medium of television transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertisin ...

shows and

theater Theatre or theater is a collaborative form of performing art that uses live performers, usually actor, actors or actresses, to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place, often a stage. The p ...

productions, with some of his shows being shown on ''

Strike.TV Strike.TV was created during the 2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike, 2007-08 Writers Guild of America (WGA) strike as consortium of more than 40 internet television, online shows by Hollywood guild members, and later uploaded to YouTube. ...

''. In 2007, his TV pilot ''Family Values'', starring

Rob Riggle Robert A. Riggle Jr. (born April 21, 1970) is an American actor, comedian, and former United States Marine Officer. He is known for his work as a correspondent on Comedy Central's ''The Daily Show'' from 2006 to 2008; as a cast member on ''Satu ...

, was screened at the

New York Television Festival The New York Television Festival (NYTVF) is a yearly festival dedicated to the celebration and promotion of independent small-screen productions, web series, and television. Background The festival was founded in 2005, and is held in venues acr ...

Filmography

Video games

Television

Film

References

External links

Official website
* American male voice actors Living people American male film actors Jewish American male actors 20th-century American male actors 21st-century American male actors American directors American male video game actors Year of birth missing (living people) 21st-century American Jews Place of birth missing (living people) {{US-voice-actor-stub