Being Batman can be grunt work

Susan Eisenberg is thrilled to have reached the point where she earns a living as a voice-over actor, but as performing careers go, it’s hard to think of a more anonymous enterprise. So it may come as a surprise that on this sunny Friday in Sherman Oaks, she is flanked by recognizable faces -- ranging from Emmy winner Dana Delany to “Smallville” co-star Michael Rosenbaum to the venerable Efrem Zimbalist Jr.

In recent months, in fact, Eisenberg has had the chance to work with a number of well-known actors, romancing onetime “Dallas” heartthrob Patrick Duffy and playing opposite the versatile Alfred Molina.

Then again, being Wonder Woman really should offer a few perks, shouldn’t it?

“I love showing up and seeing who they got as guest stars,” Eisenberg said.

“They” would be the producers of “Justice League,” an animated series on the Cartoon Network in which DC Comics characters unite to save the world. And like the superhero shows preceding it, the names that rapidly scroll by at each episode’s close often showcase an array of actors gainfully employed in movies and television, as opposed to the usual cartoon suspects.

“Going back to the original ‘Batman’ show, that was one of the things that I specifically had in mind: I wanted to avoid ‘cartoon actors,’ for the most part, because every other superhero show I had seen for the last 20 years before that had the same tone and voices to it,” said executive producer Bruce Timm.

“It’s not really any fault of the actors, but probably more the way the shows were directed. They always sounded cartoon-y.... I made a conscious effort to make the shows sound as realistic and convincing as possible, and at the time I thought that meant using actors who weren’t voice-over actors.”

In the case of “Justice League,” that has meant tapping into the ranks of TV and film regulars, including “Providence’s” George Newbern (Superman) and Carl Lumbly of ABC’s “Alias,” who gives voice to the green-skinned Martian Manhunter, J’onn J’onzz. Eric Roberts, Tom Sizemore, Dennis Haysbert (“24”), Kurtwood Smith (“That ‘70s Show”) and Peri Gilpin (“Frasier”) are among others who have taped guest roles.

Advantages of animation include the fact that no one needs to dress up for the occasion, as the casually attired (and in some instances unshaven) actors assemble in the Warner Bros. Animation facility, a cavernous space nestled within the Sherman Oaks Galleria.

Perched on stools in the spare recording studio, the cast is led through the script by voice director Andrea Romano almost like a symphony conductor, taking a few hours to lay down vocal tracks for an episode that will be illustrated later.

Of course, when you are a superhero fighting evil, the direction betrays certain quirks of the genre. “Big grunt of effort, please,” Romano tells guest star Michael Dorn, of “Star Trek: The Next Generation” fame, playing one of the villains.

Later, she coaches Maria Canals through her Hawkgirl “attack cry” and, turning to Lumbly, says, “You get electrocuted, please.” (“The one I really have trouble with is the straining grunt,” Eisenberg admits.)

Still, the dialogue goes far beyond guttural exclamations but rather displays a range of emotion, from light comedy to heavy drama. At one point, Lumbly sounds as if he could be doing a Shakespearean soliloquy, eulogizing Superman as “the immigrant from the stars, who taught us all to be heroes.”

“I love the character,” says Lumbly, who wasn’t familiar with the relatively obscure J’onn J’onzz before being cast. “It’s such a smart show.... This is closer to theater than television, but without the same limitations as film. You can go anywhere, in your mind, in your head.”

Scheduled in prime time and readying to begin its new season in January, “Justice League” doesn’t dumb down scripts for kids. Hewing closely to the comics, the heroes -- Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, the Flash, Hawkgirl and Martian Manhunter -- don’t always get along and face an eclectic roster of threats, from thwarting alien invasions to preventing an alternate future in which the Nazis, with the help of a time-traveling supervillain, have won World War II.

Despite the comic-book premise, the goal is actually to produce material on an adult level that children can enjoy too. “We try never to talk down to the audience,” Timm says, adding that he tells the cast, “This is not like any other cartoon you’ve worked on.”

In that respect, the recording process is more like “The Simpsons,” with the producers treating each session like a radio play -- allowing the actors to interact and play off each other -- as opposed to taping voices individually, as some cartoons produced for children do.

‘I’d do this for free’

The actors each have their own reasons for getting into animation, citing a period a few years ago when the genre exploded, both on prime time and through the proliferation of children’s cable networks.

Delany, who stars in the CBS drama “Presidio Med,” had an early call the day before on that series but made time to reprise her role as Lois Lane, which began six years ago on “Superman.”

“This is just fun. I’d do this for free,” she says. “We can do it anywhere. When I was shooting in Vancouver last year, I did it from there. I was a Lois Lane freak when I was a kid. It was like a dream come true. And there’s something so liberating about not being seen. You take more risks, I think, with your voice. You don’t worry about making a fool of yourself.”

No one is going to retire to a Malibu estate on the strength of voice work alone, but it could easily help furnish one. Screen Actors Guild rates call for actors to receive at least $655 per recording session for one or two voices, which doubles for providing four or five. Actors -- who can negotiate for fees above the guild minimums -- also receive residuals for the episodes, which can repeat over and over.

Some of the actors who take part are comic-book fans. Others welcome the chance to play characters their children will savor. “The only reason JoBeth Williams decided to work with us was because her kids said, ‘Mommy, you’ve got to do it! That would be the coolest thing in the world!’ ” Timm says.

From ‘F.B.I.’ to butler

For Clancy Brown, who has played menacing roles in films such as “The Shawshank Redemption” and “Starship Troopers,” the opportunity to do cartoons arose around the time his first child was born, giving him an incentive -- despite the amount of production that takes place in Canada and other foreign locales -- to stay closer to home.

Brown auditioned for the role of Superman, which in the earlier version went to Tim Daly. Instead, he was offered his nemesis, Lex Luthor. “I thought, ‘Geez, it’s like the story of my life. Can’t I be the good guy once?’ ” he says. (Brown’s roster of voices also includes Mr. Krabs on the children’s hit “SpongeBob SquarePants” -- a role, he says, that immediately put his daughter “with the in-crowd” at school.)

Zimbalist, the square-jawed star of “The F.B.I.” in the 1960s and ‘70s, gave voice to Alfred the Butler in “Batman” and drove in from his home in Solvang to play him again.

“I always loved radio, but I never got very far in it,” says the actor, who is 84. “This is just a pleasure. You get to work with wonderful people, and working with Andrea is a dream. I always tell her she plays all the parts better than anybody else. She reads them better than the actors.”

Timm has softened his stance toward voice actors, saying he marvels at the range exhibited by someone like Phil LaMarr, an alumnus of the Groundlings and Second City who portrays the 14-year-old lead on the WB’s “Static Shock” in addition to providing the sullen baritone of Green Lantern.

“It’s one of the few jobs where you get to be bipolar,” notes LaMarr, wearing a baseball cap and sweats. As for the higher-profile actors on the show, he says, “Bruce sort of made it OK to do cartoons.”

Certainly, animation is more forgiving than live-action films and television -- a medium in which actors accustomed to fretting over wrinkle lines and weight don’t have to worry about getting older, much less how they look or what they wear.

Besides, who wouldn’t want to be a superhero, especially when you don’t have to squeeze into those uncomfortable tights?

“I get two chances a week to save the world,” Lumbly says with a laugh, alluding to his spy role on “Alias.” “Two’s enough.”