David Hayter

David Hayter (born February 6, 1969) is a Canadian-American voice and screen actor and screenwriter. He is best known for providing the English voices of Solid Snake and Big Boss (Naked Snake) in the Metal Gear video game series, and for writing the screenplay for X-Men and co-writing the screenplay for The Scorpion King and X2. He also wrote a screenplay for Watchmen from the comic book series of the same name, which received an enthusiastic reception from the director and original illustrator. Earlier in his acting career, he played the lead role in the live-action Guyver: Dark Hero. His pseudonym Sean Barker comes from this role.

Early life
Hayter was born in California to Canadian parents. He started acting at the age of 9. Hayter spent most of his childhood living around the world and at the age of 15, Hayter moved to Kobe in Japan where he graduated the Canadian Academy, an international school, in 1987. After high school, he attended Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada until the age of 20 when he moved to Hollywood. He did some live acting in the early 1990s, but became interested in voice acting after making a cameo appearance in an episode of the sitcom Major Dad, and later landed the role of Captain America in the popular 1994 Spider-Man animated series. He also provided the voice of Arsène Lupin III in the English version of the anime film The Castle of Cagliostro and the voice of Tamahome in the English version of the anime series Fushigi Yūgi.

Metal Gear Solid
In 1998, Hayter voiced protagonist Solid Snake in the highly successful PlayStation video game Metal Gear Solid. He provided Snake's voice in later Metal Gear games such as Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty and Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes (which was a remake of Metal Gear Solid), and provided the voice for a closely related character, Naked Snake, a young Big Boss, in the prequels Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater and Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops. Most recently he has voiced Solid Snake (renamed Old Snake) in Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots and Naked Snake in the PSP game Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker. Also, he had a brief acting role in Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots during one of the beginning commercial propaganda scenes, starring as himself in the alternate reality of the Metal Gear world. In the scene, he wears the "Solid Eye", the technologically advanced eye patch that Old Snake wears throughout the game.

Hayter also provided the voice of Solid Snake for the character's guest appearance in Super Smash Bros. Brawl, a Wii fighting game unrelated to the Metal Gear series. Hayter is one of the few Metal Gear Solid actors to date to have played and beaten the Metal Gear games he's voiced in, while co-star Christopher Randolph has only played Metal Gear Solid.

According to an interview with Paul Eiding, Hayter gave up half of his own paycheck in order to bring back the cast of Metal Gear Solid for the remake, The Twin Snakes. This is the reason why the voice acting in The Twin Snakes was almost completely redone with the same voice actors, one of the few differences being the actor for Gray Fox, Greg Eagles, who was replaced by Rob Paulsen.

An interview with David Hayter by Game Informer in 2001, showed that Hayter wished for the then-unconfirmed Metal Gear Solid movie to be animated or made in CGI, possibly so he could provide the voice of Solid Snake. He also wished to be the screenwriter under the possible supervision of Hideo Kojima. That plan did not pan out correctly and his script was rejected by Sony. However, it isn't known if he will or will not be cast for the role or any role in the movie.

His work with Metal Gear Solid has also led Hayter to other video game voices, such as characters in Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem, by Silicon Knights, who also developed Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes for the Nintendo GameCube.

Film
Hayter's first movie appearance was in Guyver: Dark Hero. Hayter has also worked in the writing side of film. In 2000 he wrote the screenplay for the movie version of X-Men, and then went on to co-write the screenplay for its sequel X2 with Michael Dougherty and Dan Harris. Shortly after his work on X-Men, Hayter approached Marvel Entertainment about the possibility of working on another feature, and was hired to write and direct a project based on the heroine Black Widow. However, due to the limited success of similar themed films featuring female vigilante protagonists at the time, Marvel withdrew their offer to Hayter stating, "We don’t think it’s time to do this movie". Hayter's daughter Natasha, born whilst he was writing the Black Widow script, is named after the titular character.

Hayter also wrote a 134 page screenplay adaptation to the graphic novel Watchmen by Alan Moore and David Gibbons. Noted for being a harsh critic of translations of his works to film, Moore said of the script "David Hayter's screenplay was as close as I could imagine anyone getting to Watchmen. That said, I shan't be going to see it. My book is a comic book. Not a movie, not a novel. A comic book. It's been made in a certain way, and designed to be read a certain way." However, Hayter was dropped from the project after a disagreement with Universal Studios, and so was not actively involved in the actual film. In an interview with the IGN Podcast Beyond team, Hayter revealed he would be credited for writing the screenplay.

Alex Tse took over writing the screenplay which would be used in the film. For the new script, Tse drew "the best elements" from two of the project's previous drafts written by screenwriter Hayter. The script did not keep the contemporary atmosphere that Hayter created, but instead returned to the original Cold War setting of the Watchmen comic. Warner Bros. was amenable to the 1980s setting, and the director also added a title montage sequence to introduce the audience to the events of alternate history United States in that time period.

Hayter is currently in talks with Warner Bros. to write and direct a film based on the video game Lost Planet: Extreme Condition. It was also recently confirmed that Hayter had co-founded Dark Hero Studios, a company (named after his Guyver role) specializing in producing horror and fantasy themed films, comics and video games. Its first project will be a werewolf film called Wolves, directed by Hayter and starring Ray Stevenson and Thomas Dekker. Filming is set to begin this summer.

Hayter will also write the script for a film adaptation of the comic series The Deadworld.

Acting roles

 * The Castle of Cagliostro (1979): Arsene Lupin III (2000 Manga Entertainment English dub)
 * They Were Eleven (1986) (voice: English version)
 * Wrath of the Ninja (1987) (OVA): Sakon Hayate (English Version)
 * Gundam 0080: War In the Pocket (1989) (miniseries) Bernard Wiseman (English version)
 * Présumé dangereux (1990)
 * Giant Robo: The Animation (1991) (V) (English version)
 * Moldiver (Morudaibâ) (1993): Hiroshi Ozora
 * Major Dad (1993) (TV): Misha Sarotsky (guest appearance) "From Russia with Like" (Season 4 episode 17, 1993)
 * Long Shadows (1994) (TV)
 * Guyver 2: Dark Hero (1994): Sean Barker/Guyver
 * Yu Yu Hakusho: The Movie (1994): Kurama (English version)
 * Rakusho! Hyper Doll (1995) (V) (English version)
 * Street Fighter II V (1995) TV Series (English version)
 * Fushigi Yūgi: The Mysterious Play - Reflections OAV 2: Tamahome/Taka
 * Fushigi Yūgi: Memories First OAV (1996): Tamahome/Taka
 * Fushigi Yūgi: Tamahome
 * Drive (1997): Cop #1
 * Metal Gear Solid (1998): Solid Snake
 * Burn (1998)
 * Dual! Paralle lunlun monogatari (1999) TV Series (English version)
 * Wild on the Set (2000) TV Series
 * X-Men (2000): Museum Cop
 * X-Men: Evolution (2000) TV Series: Captain America
 * Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty (2001): Solid Snake/Iroquois Pliskin
 * Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem (2002): Roman Legionnaire I/Roman Legionnaire II/Angkor Thom guard
 * Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance (2002): Solid Snake/Iroquois Pliskin
 * Howl's Moving Castle (2004) Additional voices
 * Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater (2004): Naked Snake/Big Boss
 * Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes (2004): Solid Snake
 * Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops (2006): Naked Snake/Big Boss
 * Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence (2006): Naked Snake/Big Boss
 * Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops Plus (2007): Naked Snake/Big Boss
 * Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots (2008): Old Snake and Himself in the beginning videos
 * Super Smash Bros. Brawl (2008): Solid Snake
 * Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker (2010): Naked Snake/Big Boss

Screenwriting

 * X-Men (2000) - writer
 * The Scorpion King (2002) - co-writer
 * X2: X-Men United (2003) - co-writer
 * Watchmen (2009) - co-writer