David Hayter (February 6, 1969, Santa Monica, California, USA) is a Canadian-American voice and screen actor, screenwriter, film producer, and director. He is well known as the English-language voice actor for Solid Snake and Naked Snake throughout many titles in the Metal Gear video game series, voicing the character between 1998 and 2010.
As a screenwriter, he is best known for co-writing the superhero films X-Men, X2: X-Men United, and Watchmen, the former for which he won the Saturn Award for Best Writing and was nominated for a Hugo Award and Nebula Award.
Hayter was born in Santa Monica, 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, Japan where he graduated from the Canadian Academy, an international school, in 1987. After high school, he attended Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute for two years until transferring to Ryerson University in Toronto, Ontario, Canada where he stayed until the age of 20, when he moved to Hollywood.
Hayter did some live acting in the early 1990s, but became interested in voice acting after acting 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. He also starred in the 1994 straight-to-video movie Guyver: Dark Hero as the protagonist Sean Barker (a role he took from actor Jack Armstrong), and have used the characters' name as an alias in various work credits.
Hayter began providing the English voice of Metal Gear series protagonist Solid Snake in the 1998 video game Metal Gear Solid, which also served as the series's transition from 2D to 3D. Hayter would go on to play Solid Snake and his predecessor Naked Snake throughout all the succeeding installments (including spinoffs, re-releases and adaptations) up until Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker in 2010. Hayter also has an extended live-action cameo as himself in one of the fictional TV programs prior to the start of Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots (2008); where he wears the "Solid Eye", the technologically advanced eye patch that Snake wears throughout the game. Outside the Metal Gear series, Hayter also voiced Snake in Super Smash Bros. Brawl (2008), and will do so again in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (2018).
| Year | Image | Character | Title |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2018 | 
|
Snake | Super Smash Bros. Ultimate |
| 2010 | 
|
Big Boss / Naked Snake | Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker |
| 2004 | 
|
Big Boss / Naked Snake | Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater |
| 2002 | 
|
Roman Legionnaire 1 | Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem |
| 2002 | 
|
Roman Legionnaire 2 | Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem |
| 2002 | 
|
Angkor Thom Guard | Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem |