With megastars such as Mel Gibson in animated features like Pocohontas, the 1990s saw the steady growth of celebrity voices used to market animated films.

Once upon a time, as many fairy tales begin, animated features were voiced by dependable and versatile voice actors, respected in the industry but unknown to the public at large. Their only acknowledgement (if they received any at all) was a title card reading "With the Talents Of..." in the opening credits, perhaps leaving some doubt in the audience's mind as to what exactly those talents consisted of.

Names like Sterling Holloway, Phil Harris and Sebastian Cabot regularly graced the Disney features; talented men all, but their voices, recurring in film after film, saddled the movies with uniformity and predictability that ultimately sapped the films' vitality as the studio entered the 1960s.

A new generation gradually replaced the veterans, character actors from film and TV whose names in the credits might evoke an “oh, that was him” from the audience; the age of name-above-the-title, “wow, she's in this film” was still a ways off.

Things started changing in the 1980s, when Disney shook off the past, revitalizing itself with Broadway musical-style scores and stories. The market for animated features began expanding, and newcomer studios searched for an edge that would help their pictures reach an audience. Marvel and Sunbow's 1987 G.I. Joe: The Movie featured Don Johnson at the height of his Miami Vice TV fame, while the previous year the animated Transformers movie typecast Orson Welles (who died days after recording his lines) as the voice of an entire planet.

Welles and Johnson were the highest-profile names in their pictures, standing out from the character actors and voice pros that filled out the rest of the cast. However, beyond mentioning their names in the films' publicity, their presence was barely noted. It was a similar situation when Billy Joel starred -- and created songs -- for Disney's 1988 Oliver and Company, while Jimmy Stewart's presence in Steven Spielberg's An American Tail: Fievel Goes West amounted to little more than a cameo. The highest-profile celebrity voice back in the day was a comedian whose name was practically the movie's title: Rodney Dangerfield, starring as a canine version of himself in Rover Dangerfield. The film suffered the same disrespect as Dangerfield's stand-up persona: it got no theatrical play and, as of yet, no DVD release.

Rob Paulsen, man of many voices.

In 1991, things changed for good when, ironically enough, an actor refused onscreen credit for a voice performance that made and stole a movie. Robin Williams' star turn as Genie in Disney's Aladdin helped turn the picture into a phenomenon. If ever a performer and role were meant for each other, Williams' improvisational skills and mastery of mimicry made him the only choice for the part. The star asked Disney to keep his name out of it, but the open secret of his role in the film earned the studio tons of publicity, leading to a well publicized rupture between the two when McDonald's built an entire ad campaign around the genie. In an attempt to make nice, then-studio head Jeffrey Katzenberg gave the comedian an original Picasso, leading to Williams' famous quip, "That's me by the side of the road, holding the sign 'Will work for art.’"

Stars on the order of Mel Gibson (Pocahontas) and Tom Hanks (Toy Story) appeared in Disney's animated features in the ’90s, but the studio chose to publicize, rather than advertise, their presence. Hanks’ and Tim Allen's names appeared on posters for Toy Story 2 in 1999, but the first no-holds-barred attempt to capitalize on star power may have come in 2001, when posters for DreamWorks' first Shrek movie prominently featured the names of Mike Myers, Eddie Murphy, Cameron Diaz and John Lithgow -- and there was no turning back. Spielberg, Katzenberg and Geffen's upstart animation studio likely looked to celebrities to equalize the playing field vis-à-vis Disney, with advertising for their subsequent films also highlighting their star-studded casts.

Celebrity voices in animation are by now a given and, as might be expected, professional voice actors have mixed feelings on the subject. Rob Paulsen's cartoon credits go back to the early 1980s and into the future (with next year's Disney DTV Little Mermaid III). He's played Smurfs, Snorks and Ninja Turtles, and voiced Animaniacs' Yakko and the Brain's dim-witted accomplice Pinky. In last year's Ant Bully, Paulsen supported a multiple-Oscar-winning cast that included Nicolas Cage, Julia Roberts and Meryl Streep. "Most of the time," he says, "when I work with celebrity talent, they sound like what you expect them to sound like, character choices notwithstanding. You can't argue with the pedigree of those people, all of whom are not only world-class talents, but without question bona fide superstars.

"But in the movie, they all sound like themselves."

Sometimes, of course, producers go after celebrity talent for precisely that reason. "Oh, that story," sighs Surf's Up producer Chris Jenkins, when asked about the cartoony voice Jeff Bridges tried to supply for Big Z, his character in the film. "It was at the first [recording] session, a fleeting moment. It was pushed, more a head voice than a Jeff voice. We said no, just go with your own voice.

"I originally thought of Jeff as I was writing down the character's name, 'Big Z.' It just came to me at the same time, I could hear Jeff, a California accent, a surfer. What you always want with animation, whether you're using unknowns or celebrities, is a voice that fits the character. As you know Jeff is a very big guy. He's got the right gravel in his voice, he's in the right age group. He was a surfer in the 60s and so on. The problem is a lot of the time a celebrity will be cast who doesn't fit in a body. You're torn out of the movie, it doesn't work. You have to pay heed to characteristics -- you want a certain connection."