Ellen McLain

Ellen McLain (born December 1, 1952) is an American opera singer and voice actress from Nashville, Tennessee. She is best known for providing the voice of GLaDOS, the computer antagonist of the Portal video game series and "The Witch", a crying female zombie who can easily incapacitate or even kill any player who startled her, from Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2. Her voice roles also include the Jaeger A.I. in Pacific Rim, the Combine Overwatch in Half-Life 2 and the Administrator, the announcer of the video game Team Fortress 2.

Career
McLain provides voices for many characters in several video games from Valve Corporation. Among them are GLaDOS, the artificial intelligence antagonist in Portal (for which she won an AIAS Interactive Achievement Award for Outstanding Achievement in Character Performance), Portal 2 and Bridge Constructor Portal; the announcer in Team Fortress 2; and the voice of the Combine Overwatch for the Half-Life 2 series.

McLain sang "Still Alive" and "Want You Gone", the ending credits songs to Portal and Portal 2, respectively, both of which were written by Jonathan Coulton. She sang "Cara Mia Addio" at the end of Portal 2. It is sometimes called the "Turret Opera". In December 2011, McLain won the Spike Video Game Award in the category "Best Performance by a Human Female" for her voice acting as GLaDOS in Portal 2.

In 2013, she lent her public support to gathering donations for the Kickstarter-funded LGBT gaming convention GaymerX. She later was a special guest at the convention in August 2013. In 2015, she portrayed Lisa Clarke in the gay independent film, Winning Dad.

Personal life
McLain has been married to fellow voice actor John Patrick Lowrie since 1986. In Half-Life 2, her husband voiced the citizens who assist the protagonist. In Team Fortress 2, Lowrie voices the Sniper.