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Lani Jean Minella (born July 28, 1950) is an American voice actress, voice director, and producer mostly working in the games industry. She is also the founder and owner of the voice-acting agency AudioGodz. As of August 2024, Minella was recognized by Guinness World Records as the most prolific video game voice actress, a title previously held by Jennifer Hale.
Since starting her career and becoming well known for her unique four-octave vocal range, Minella has been in multiple video game franchises such as Diablo, StarCraft, Duke Nukem, Backyard Sports, Warcraft, Baldur's Gate, Unreal, Borderlands, and Darksiders. As well, she has provided many voices for characters in a variety of other video games, most notable roles like Nancy Drew in the video game series, Gabriella in , Rouge the Bat and Omochao from Sonic the Hedgehog in their debut, Ivy Valentine from Soulcalibur, Eve in Mass Effect 3, and Lucas in Super Smash Bros. Minella has also done multiple roles in a game such as Sindel and Sheeva in the 2011 Mortal Kombat reboot, Gloria and the Red Run in , and the creature voices for Clickers, Bloaters, and Runners in The Last of Us and its sequel.
In 1996, Minella worked on a major first-person shooter video game, Duke Nukem 3D, as voice director and actress, voicing most of the female characters in the series. She helped cast the voice actor of Duke Nukem, Jon St. John. She met Jon when she was cast as the voice for a commercial he was producing in San Diego. After being impressed by her voices, Jon imitated the voices back at Minella and she asked if he had ever done voice acting for video games. She shortly got him a telephone interview with the game's creator, George Broussard, and eventually got him the part of Duke.
Minella's first major voice role in a video game was for HeR Interactive's adventure-mystery series Nancy Drew, starring as the titular character Nancy Drew, debuting with 1998's . Minella reprised her role as Nancy Drew in 31 other video games, with her last being in 2015. HeR Interactive's CEO then decided to find a voice actress local to the Seattle area (Minella resides in San Diego).
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