Jill Talley

Sketch comedy came first. Jill Talley, born in Chicago in 1962, appeared through Mr. Show with Bob and David before the voice career took over. That background matters, because her comic instinct is a sketch performer's: find the flattest possible reading and hold it while everything around you escalates.

Karen Plankton on SpongeBob SquarePants is the role that defines her, and it is a small masterpiece of restraint. Karen is a computer, so the voice is deliberately affectless, and Talley builds an entire marriage out of contempt delivered at low volume. Nothing on that show is quieter and very little of it is funnier. She has reprised the part across the feature films, from the 2004 original through Sponge Out of Water and Sponge on the Run.

The rest of the animation list is long and varied: Sarah Dubois on The Boondocks, Nosey on Rocko's Modern Life and its revival, Rita Loud on The Loud House, plus Cow and Chicken, I Am Weasel, Camp Lazlo, American Dad! and a run of recent SpongeBob spin-offs. She works in live action too, usually in small comic parts, including Cindy in Little Miss Sunshine, Mrs. Timmerman in Sky High, God Bless America and World's Greatest Dad. She is married to her SpongeBob co-star Tom Kenny, which makes them one of the more consequential couples in American cartoons.