About the Narrators
F. Murray Abraham is an American actor. He became widely known during the 1980s after winning the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role as Antonio Salieri in the 1984 film Amadeus. He has appeared in many roles, both leading and supporting, in such major films as All the President’s Men and Scarface and the award-winning television series Homeland. He has also acted on Broad and Off-Broadway and won numerous awards for his work in theater, film, television, and audio recordings. He has also received lifetime achievement awards and has been inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame.
Alan Alda is an American actor, director, screenwriter, and author. A six-time Emmy Award and Golden Globe Award winner, he played Hawkeye Pierce for eleven years in the television series M*A*S*H and has acted in, written, and directed many feature films. He has starred often on Broadway, and his avid interest in science has led to his hosting PBS’s Scientific American Frontiers for eleven years. He was nominated for an Academy Award in 2005 and has been nominated for thirty Emmy awards.
René Auberjonois is an American stage, film, television, and voice actor and an AudioFile Earphones Award–winning narrator. After graduating from Carnegie-Mellon University, he acted with various theater companies, including San Francisco’s American Conservatory Theater and Los Angeles’ Mark Taper Forum. In 1969, he earned a Tony Award for his performance as Sebastian Baye alongside Katharine Hepburn in Coco. Since then, he has acted in a variety of theater productions, films, and television series, in addition to being active in radio drama.
Becky
Ann Baker, narrator and actress, has received critics’ praise for her readings
of books by such authors as Stephen King, James Patterson, Patricia Cornwell, Iris
Johansen, and Karin Slaughter. She has performed in numerous roles on Broadway,
starring in Stephen Sondheim’s Assassins.
Her many television credits include Girls,
Smash, and Nurse Jackie, and her film credits include Spider-Man 3, The Discoverers,
and Hope Springs.
Dennis Boutsikaris is a two-time OBIE award winner. He has received five Audie Awards and seven Golden Earphone Awards for his work in over 100 audiobooks and was voted one of the Best Voices of the Year by AudioFile magazine. He has appeared in numerous Broadway, television, and film roles. He played Mozart on Broadway in Amadeus and has appeared on television shows including Shameless, The Good Wife, House M.D., Grey’s Anatomy, ER, and Law & Order.
Bruce Boxleitner, in addition to his remarkable voice work, starred in several TV series including How the West Was Won, Scarecrow and Mrs. King, and Babylon 5, as well as thirty-five TV movies and feature films including Tron, The Babe, Kuffs, and Gods and Generals.
Mel Brooks, director, producer, writer, and actor, is one of the few entertainers in an elite group to earn all four major entertainment awards: the Emmy, the Grammy, the Oscar, and the Tony. In 2009 he was a Kennedy Center Honoree, recognized for a lifetime of extraordinary contributions to American culture. In 2013 he was the forty-first recipient of the Life Achievement Award from the American Film Institute. In 2016 he was presented with the National Medal of Arts by President Obama. His career began in television writing for Your Show of Shows, after which he helped create the TV series Get Smart. He and Carl Reiner wrote and performed the 2000 Year Old Man Grammy-winning comedy albums. He won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay for his first feature film, The Producers. Many hit comedy films followed, including The Twelve Chairs, Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, High Anxiety, History of the World Part I, To Be or Not to Be, Spaceballs, and Robin Hood: Men in Tights. His film company, Brooksfilms Limited, produced critically acclaimed films such as The Elephant Man, Frances, My Favorite Year, and 84 Charing Cross Road.
LeVar Burton is an Emmy Award–winning actor, presenter, director, author, and Earphones Award–winning narrator. He is best known for his roles as the host of the long-running PBS children’s series Reading Rainbow, as Lieutenant Commander Geordi La Forge in Star Trek: The Next Generation, and as the young Kunta Kinte in the 1977 award-winning ABC television miniseries Roots. He has also directed a number of television episodes for various iterations of Star Trek, among other programs. He was named 2017’s Best Male Literary Citizen by Literary Hub and is a 2020 recipient of the Ember Award for unsung contributions to literature.
Maz Jobrani is a founding member of the Axis of Evil comedy tour. He performs stand-up comedy around the world, including in Europe, Australia, and the Middle East where he performed in front of the King of Jordan. He just released his third comedy special, I Come In Peace, which aired on Showtime and Netflix. Maz starred in the films Friday After Next, 13 Going on 30, and The Interpreter. He was a series regular on ABC’s Better Off Ted, which had a cult following, and he has guest starred on Curb Your Enthusiasm, 24, True Blood and Shameless to name a few. He has also given two TED talks, and he has performed his stand-up on The Tonight Show, Comedy Central, and Showtime.
Christine Lakin is an Earphones Award–winning narrator and acclaimed television actress, best known for her roles as Alicia “Al” Lambert on the hit family comedy Step by Step and as Joan of Arc on Showtime’s Reefer Madness.
Alfred Molina is an actor and winner of numerous Earphones Awards for audiobook narration. His films include Spiderman II, Frida, Magnolia, Chocolat, Boogie Nights, The Perez Family, Maverick, Enchanted April, Not Without My Daughter, Raiders of the Lost Ark and Prick Up Your Ears. He has appeared extensively on British and American television, including the TV series Bram & Alice and Ladies’ Man. He received a Tony Award nomination, a Drama Desk Award, and an Outer Critics Circle Award for his performance in Art on Broadway. He also performed on Broadway in Molly Sweeney and in Speed the Plow for the National Theatre in London.
Carl Reiner (1922–2020) was an actor, film director, producer, writer, and comedian. He began his directing career on the Dick Van Dyke Show, and his first feature film was an adaptation of Joseph Stein’s play Enter Laughing. He also wrote a number of books, including the memoir My Anecdotal Life.
Jay O. Sanders began his acting career off-Broadway in Shakespearean roles then went on to appear in numerous films and television series, including Revolutionary Road, The Day after Tomorrow, and Kiss the Girls, based on the novel by James Patterson. He has narrated more than fifty audio books over the years, including the bestselling My Losing Season by Pat Conroy and Dean Koontz’s Dragon Tears and Mr. Murder. He also won six AudioFile Earphones Awards.
David
Ogden Stiers is an American actor, director, vocal actor, and musician, noted
for his roles in Disney movies, as well as his performances in the television
series M*A*S*H . He has provided
voice work for dozens of film and television projects, with his first work
being on one of George Lucas’ earliest films, the critically acclaimed THX 1138. He went on to provide the
voice for numerous Disney movies and for several television series, including
documentary films produced by Ric Burns. He has also lent his voice to several
video games.
John Turturro is an American actor and filmmaker. He is known for his wide range of roles in independent films and has appeared in over sixty feature films. He has worked frequently with the Coen brothers, Adam Sandler, and Spike Lee.