Amanda Seyfried

Amanda Seyfried’s Path Into Animation and Voice Work

An Allentown, Pennsylvania native who started modeling at eight years old and landed her first soap opera role at fifteen, Amanda Seyfried spent most of her early career building a live-action resume before animation came calling. Soap operas, teen comedies, HBO drama, and a string of big-studio films shaped her instincts long before she stepped into a voice booth for a feature film.

Epic and the Blue Sky Studios Debut

The first major animated lead came with Blue Sky Studios’ Epic (2013), where Seyfried voiced Mary Katherine – known as M.K. a young woman who gets pulled into a hidden world of forest creatures locked in a war for survival. The role called for urgency, emotional range, and the kind of naturalistic delivery that doesn’t read as cartoon performance, all things Seyfried carried over from years of live-action work. The film performed solidly at the box office and put her on the short list for future animated projects.

Scoob! and Daphne Blake

Warner Bros. Animation’s Scoob! (2020) handed her one of the most recognizable characters in animation history – Daphne Blake of Mystery Inc. The casting made sense on paper: Seyfried grew up watching Scooby-Doo and brought genuine affection for the character into the recording sessions. Rather than imitating the classic TV voice, she played Daphne as enthusiastic and self-assured, anchoring her in the film’s updated tone without erasing what made the character familiar.

Ted: The Animated Series and a Returning Role

The Seth MacFarlane connection that started with Scoob! continued with Ted: The Animated Series (2026) on Peacock, where Seyfried reprises her role as Sam from Ted 2 (2015). The fully animated format, set after the events of the second film, reunites her with MacFarlane and Mark Wahlberg in voice form. Also in 2026, she voices Cinderella in the animated film Steps, continuing what has become a steady parallel track in animation alongside her live-action work.

Steps and the Cinderella Role

Also arriving in 2026, Steps casts Seyfried as Cinderella in what marks another major animated feature credit. The project adds a fairy-tale register to a voice portfolio that has so far leaned toward contemporary animated worlds. Playing a character this embedded in cultural memory requires a different kind of restraint familiar enough to feel right, distinct enough to justify the casting and it represents the broadest tonal stretch of her animation work to date.

The Live-Action Foundation Behind the Voice Work

What makes Seyfried effective in animation is the same thing that earned her an Oscar nomination for Mank (2020) and a Golden Globe and Emmy for The Dropout (2022) she anchors characters in specific, grounded behavior rather than surface personality. That precision translates cleanly into the voice booth. Her animated output is small compared to her film and television credits, but each role has landed with studios that keep coming back.