It's That Announcer Guy From the Movies
April 13, 2007 — -- Don LaFontaine is a Hollywood icon. But before last August, few people had any idea who he was -- until he opened his mouth. LaFontaine is the voice or, as Geico labeled him in a recent commercial, "that announcer guy from the movies."
He is the veritable Babe Ruth of movie trailers with just as many nicknames: "the King of Movie Trailers," "Mr. Voice," "Thunder Throat," "the Voice of God.
"I'm called the trailer guy, the voice of the movies because I've done so many of them over a long long period of time," LaFontaine said in an interview with ABC News.
With a thunder-throat like his, you'd think that LaFontaine would get recognized everywhere he goes -- the dry cleaner's, the super market, certainly at the movie theater -- but not so, he said.
"People don't recognize my voice at all really. My conversational voice is the same voice that I use when I'm working, but when I'm working it's more, it's a bigger, a little more over-the-top kind of voice that, if you used it in normal conversation, you would have people calling security."
So, for most of his career, LaFontaine lived in relative anonymity. Then Geico Insurance Co. began running ads featuring LaFontaine and a "real" Geico customer. Seemingly overnight, LaFontaine went from faceless voice to a YouTube celebrity.
"The Geico ad changed my life. It was amazing what happened," he said. "The public isn't necessarily unfamiliar with me, but this Geico spot just exploded to the point where now I am recognized virtually everywhere I go. And it's a little disconcerting, because I've been anonymous for over 40 years doing this, and now I've got people watching me to see how I eat. It's a little weird."
When LaFontaine began his career in the early 1960s, movie trailers were nonexistent. "Up until the early '60s, believe it or not, the primary advertising vehicle for motion pictures was the theatrical trailer, the previews, the coming attractions or the print ads. They did very little or no advertising on radio or television, so this was a brand new idea," he said.
