John Berger was a legendary art critic, novelist, painter and… video game voice actor?
Twitter users were flabbergasted to find out the late British writer provided the voice of East End gangster Albert Crisp in the 1999 video game Grand Theft Auto: London 1969.
The author of Ways to see can be heard [from 0:47] delivering lines such as “Pretty little thing is’tcha?” – perhaps a reference to his popularization of the notion of the “male gaze” – and asking the player to “fix some ungrateful little assholes”.
While subsequent installments of the best-selling, ultra-violent series featured Hollywood stars like Ray Liotta and Samuel L. Jackson, video gaming was a bit more amateur in 1999. Apparently, production company Rockstar was recording audio for the game at the same studio as Berger and he agreed to voice the Kray Brothers-inspired villain.
Berger’s lack of acting experience doesn’t seem to have held the series back – the final Grand Theft Auto is thought to be the most profitable entertainment product in history.
