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Charles Martinet (born September 17, 1955, in San Jose, California) is a voice actor, best known for providing the voice of Mario, the star of Nintendo's flagship franchise. He also voices Luigi, Wario, Waluigi, and Toadsworth.

Working for Nintendo since 1994, Martinet started voicing Mario at video game trade shows in which attendees would walk up to a TV screen displaying a 3-D Mario head that moved around the screen and talked. This system was called "Mario in Real-Time," or "MIRT." Martinet could see the attendees by means of a camera setup, and a facial motion capture rig recorded his mouth movements in order to synchronise Martinet's mouth movement with the on-screen Mario mouth movement. This digital puppetry, with Martinet's comic performance, was a novelty at the time.

Charles Martinet's high pitched voice for Mario is considered a novelty and an icon of the game industry. It has sometimes been referred to as Mickey Mouse with an Italian accent.

Martinet's video game voiceover debut was as Mario in the 1995 Windows release of Interplay's game Mario's Game Gallery. However, most were first exposed to Mario's voice in the landmark 1996 game Super Mario 64. He has voiced Mario, Luigi, Wario, Waluigi, Toadsworth, Baby Mario and Baby Luigi in most games wherein these characters speak. He also voiced the enemies Wart, Mouser, Tryclyde, and Clawgrip in Super Mario Advance. His voice work appears in the English and Japanese-language versions of the games.

Martinet also provided voiceover acting for the boxers and the announcer in the Super NES title Super Punch-Out!!. He also voiced the character Vigoro in Sega's Dreamcast and GameCube RPG, Skies of Arcadia. He is also the voice of Homunculus in the Konami PlayStation 2 game Shadow of Destiny, and provided voices for Reader Rabbit and The ClueFinders games.

Martinet has also worked as a voice actor in commercials, cartoons, and promotions. At the E3 trade show in 2005, Charles (as an Animal Crossing character) could be found roaming the virtual village featured in the playable demo of Animal Crossing: Wild World. Martinet also did Mario's voice as the voice announcer for Pac-Man Vs. on the GameCube.

Martinet has also done the primary voice work in several educational game series such as Leap Frog.

During E3, 2006, Martinet appeared on a human height LCD screen doing the Mario voices, this can been seen on Gamespot's coverage of the Wii at E3.

On August 18, 2006, Martinet appeared as a guest celebrity at Nintendo NSider Forum's annual event, Camp Hyrule.

On September 15, 2006, Martinet made a public appearance at the Game Store at Oxford Street, London.

On March 9, 2007, Martinet appeared as a guest at the Video Games Live Concert in San Francisco, California, USA (alongside with Koji Kondo and Shigeru Miyamoto), entering on stage using his trademark Mario and Luigi voices.

• Short clip of Martinet's Mario voice acting
• Comic Con 2006 Interview
• Charles Martinet at the Internet Movie Database
• CharlesMartinet.com
• The Sun Online interview and podcast. (Accessed 26-Jan-07. Note, second paragraph is erroneous paraphrasing of audio interview.)