American · b. 1973 · 1990s – 2020s
Jen Taylor holds the rare distinction of voicing two icons at opposite ends of gaming's emotional range: Princess Peach for Nintendo and Cortana, the AI companion at the heart of Halo.
Born in Seattle in 1973, Jen Taylor graduated from Northwestern University with a theatre degree and worked as a radio DJ at KNDD before backing into voice work, teaching herself the craft by recording the radio and imitating what she heard. Her Seattle base put her within reach of both Nintendo of America and a young Bungie, and from 1999 she voiced Princess Peach, Toad, and other Mushroom Kingdom characters — a run that lasted until 2008. In 2001 she originated Cortana in Halo: Combat Evolved, and it is that performance that reshaped what a game companion could be: not a quest-marker with a voice, but a character whose wit, warmth, and eventual fragility gave the Master Chief someone to be human alongside. Taylor later voiced Zoey in Left 4 Dead, narrated close to thirty audiobooks to several AudioFile Earphones Awards, played Salem in RWBY, and lent her voice to Microsoft's Cortana assistant — carrying a video game character out of the medium and onto millions of desktops.