Ellen McLain

Ellen McLain is an American opera-trained singer and voice actress from Nashville, Tennessee, best known outside classical music for lending her voice to some of the most memorable characters in video games. She plays GLaDOS, the sardonic artificial intelligence antagonist of Valve's «Portal» and «Portal 2», and also voices the Announcer and the Administrator in «Team Fortress 2», as well as the Combine Overwatch system in «Half-Life 2» and its episodic sequels.

Her background in opera gives her voice work a distinctive musicality, which carried directly into song: «Still Alive» and «Want You Gone», written by Jonathan Coulton for the Portal games and performed by McLain in character as GLaDOS, became cult favorites that blur the line between video game ending theme and standalone pop song. Tracks like «You Wouldn’t Know» and «GLaDOS’ Song» extend that same persona into original music.

McLain’s career sits at an unusual intersection of classical training, voice acting, and internet-age novelty music, and her GLaDOS material in particular has had an outsized influence on how game soundtracks are remembered and covered by fans.