Barbara Scaff

Best known for voicing Ulrich Stern in Code Lyoko, Carla Valenti in Indigo Prophecy, and Hostess Chloe in Detroit: Become Human, this American-born seiyuu has spent decades out of Paris as one of English dubbing's most trusted performers. A Northwestern University graduate with Broadway and Folies Bergere stage credits, she has maintained a parallel music career that placed two singles on the French Top 50 charts.

Barbara Scaff’s Career at the Crossroads of American Talent and French Animation

Paris became the unlikely launchpad for one of English-language dubbing’s most quietly indispensable careers. Barbara Weber-Scaff – born Barbara Ann Weber on August 21, 1963, in the United States – relocated to France and built a body of work that straddles Broadway stages, animated television, blockbuster films, and narrative video games. Few careers show the same range of live performance roots feeding directly into voice work of genuine dramatic weight.

Her stage background was not incidental. After graduating from Northwestern University in 1985 with a degree in Communication, Scaff made her acting debut in a Paris production of “Les Miserables” in 1991, later performing in a trilogy of musicals at the Folies Bergere and starring in the French TV variety show “Les Annees Tubes.” That live-performance foundation – learning to carry character through voice alone in front of an audience – shaped the control and precision she would later bring to animation recording booths and game studios across Europe.

Code Lyoko and the Making of Ulrich Stern

The role that introduced Scaff to a generation of animation fans was Ulrich Stern in the French-produced animated series “Code Lyoko,” which ran from 2003 to 2007. Notably, she originally auditioned for the character Jeremy, but a cold during the audition gave her voice a quality that landed her the role of Ulrich instead – a happy accident that became one of the defining credits of her career. Taking on a male teenage lead required a particular kind of vocal grounding, and Scaff delivered a performance steady enough to anchor the show’s ensemble across four seasons. She also voiced Hiroki Ishiyama, Tamiya Diop, and the dog Kiwi within the same series – a workload that speaks to her adaptability across character types.

The same production circle extended to “Eliot Kid,” the French-Canadian animated series, where Scaff voiced the title character – another young male lead with a hair-trigger imagination. Back-to-back male child protagonists voiced by the same American actress based in Paris underlines how thoroughly she had made herself the go-to resource for English dubbing in French animation.

Quantic Dream and the Video Game Side of Her Work

Barbara Scaff’s longest-running collaboration outside animation belongs to Quantic Dream, the Paris-based studio behind some of the most cinematic narrative games of the past two decades. Her first major credit with the studio came as Carla Valenti in “Indigo Prophecy” (known in Europe as “Fahrenheit”) in 2005 – a detective thriller in which her character served as one of the two player-controlled protagonists. She returned for “Heavy Rain: Chronicle One – The Taxidermist” as Madison Paige, then for “Beyond: Two Souls” (2013) voicing both Norah and Shimasani, and again for “Detroit: Become Human” (2018) as Hostess Chloe and Caroline Phillips.

That span of nearly fifteen years on Quantic Dream projects is not a coincidence – it reflects a trust between the studio and a performer capable of handling emotionally demanding material across long recording schedules. The studio’s games are built on performance capture and nuanced dialogue delivery, and Scaff’s theater background made her a natural fit for their production model.

Film Credits and the Broader Stage

On the film side, Scaff voiced Empress Aloi in Luc Besson’s “Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets” (2017) and contributed additional voices to the animated feature “Persepolis” (2007). She also appeared in “Immortal” (2004), a science-fiction film produced in France. These credits reflect a career that never stayed confined to one corner of the industry – moving between animated features, live-action productions, and game studios with the same professional steadiness.

The Music Career Running Parallel

Separate from her voice work, Scaff built a legitimate pop music career in France. Her songs “Terre Indigo” and “Elle Donne” reached numbers four and six on the French Top 50 charts respectively. She also collaborated on the track “A Step Too Far” alongside Sir Elton John and Jenny MacKay, and recorded a cover of “It’s Raining Men” with MacKay. For an American actress in Paris, charting on French pop radio while simultaneously anchoring a beloved animated series represents an unusually broad cultural footprint.

Most Known Roles of Barbara Scaff

- Ulrich Stern – Code Lyoko (2003-2007)
- Eliot Kid – Eliot Kid (animated series)
- Carla Valenti – Indigo Prophecy / Fahrenheit (2005, video game)
- Madison Paige – Heavy Rain: Chronicle One – The Taxidermist (2010, video game)
- Norah Gray / Shimasani – Beyond: Two Souls (2013, video game)
- Hostess Chloe / Caroline Phillips – Detroit: Become Human (2018, video game)
- Calamity Jane – The Legend of Calamity Jane (1997-1998)
- Empress Aloi – Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (2017)
- Leanna – Dark Messiah of Might and Magic (2006, video game)
- Hiroki Ishiyama / Tamiya Diop / Kiwi – Code Lyoko (2003-2007)