Ellen McLain

About Ellen McLain

Ellen McLain, the voice of GLaDOS, is from Nashville, Tennessee. Her work in Portal received the AIAS Interactive Achievement Award for Outstanding Achievement in Character Performance, and for Portal 2 she received the Spike TV Video Game Award for Best Performance by a Human Female. GLaDOS has also been featured in Poker Night 2, Portal Pinball, and Lego Dimensions.
McLain is the only person to have her voice in all the games in the Orange Box from Valve. Among them are the Announcer in Team Fortress 2 and the voice of the Combine Overwatch for the Half-Life 2 series. She sang the ending credits song for Portal, “Still Alive”, and Portal 2, “Want You Gone”, and “You Wouldn’t Know” for Lego Dimensions, all written by Jonathan Coulton. Ellen sang and wrote the lyrics for “Cara Mia Addio” (the Turret Opera by Mike Morasky) featured at the end of Portal 2.

McLain is also the voice of Broodmother and Death Prophet in DOTA 2. Her work as Rebecca Walker in The Church in the Darkness, from Paranoid Productions, was released in 2019.
Ellen has worked in theater and opera for over thirty years. Her professional career began on Broadway with Rex Harrison in My Fair Lady and with the legendary Peggy Lee in her show, Peg. Ellen’s stage credits range from Linda Loman in Death of a Salesman to Mimi in La Boheme. Ellen can be seen on the Web as the Fairy Godmother in Synthetic PictureHaus’ Wish It, Inc. Her work as Lisa Clark in Arthur Allen’s film, Winning Dad has been seen at LGBT Film Festivals in Boston, Kansas City, Seattle, and Mumbai, India. Ellen is also the voice of Gipsy Danger in Guillermo Del Toro’s Pacific Rim.

In the audiobook realm, Ellen reads Zach Wienersmith’s children’s book, Augie and the Green Knight, and the Sci-Fi Saga, Dancing With Eternity, with and authored by her husband John Patrick Lowrie, who insisted she finally get a voice demo and is therefore responsible for her subsequent fame as the much loved and hated GLaDOS.