Susan Alice Bennett (née Cameron, born July 31, 1949) is an American voice actress and a former backup singer for Roy Orbison and Burt Bacharach.[3] She is best known as the female American voice of Apple's Siri personal assistant, since the service was introduced on the iPhone 4S on October 4, 2011. She was the voice of Siri until the iOS 7 update was released on September 18, 2013.[4]
Bennett was born in Burlington, Vermont, and attended high school at Clinton Central School in Clinton, New York. In 1967, she enrolled in Pembroke College and graduated in 1971 from Brown University after the two schools merged. In college, Bennett focused on the classics, intending to be a teacher. She acted in Sock and Buskin theatrical productions, was a member of the jazz band, Conglomerate, and was a singer with the Chattertocks, an a cappella group.[5]
In June 2005, the software company ScanSoft was looking for someone to be the voice for a database project involving speech construction. They inquired with GM Voices and selected Bennett, who happened to be present when the scheduled voice-over artist was absent.[10] She worked in a home recording booth in July 2005, more than four hours each day, reading phrases and sentences. The recordings were then concatenated into the various words, sentences, and paragraphs used in the Siri voice.[8] Bennett became aware she was the voice of Siri when a friend emailed her about it in October 2011.
Apple has never acknowledged or confirmed its use of Bennett, but audio-forensics experts hired by CNN expressed 100% certainty that Bennett was the voice of Siri.[8]
At Brown University, Bennett met her first husband, professional ice hockey player Curt Bennett.[5] She later married audio engineer and guitarist Rick Hinkle.[11] She now lives in Atlanta, Georgia.
On October 4, 2013, she appeared on CNN "New Day" explaining how she was picked to play the part of Siri.[12]
In the March 13, 2015, episode of Adult Swim's The Jack and Triumph Show, titled "Siri", Bennett appeared as herself and was referred to as the "voice of Siri".[13]
^Vlahos, James (2019). Talk to Me: How Voice Computing Will Transform the Way We Live, Work and Think, p. 111, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Boston and New York, 2019. ISBN978-1-328-79930-2.
^"Susan Bennett (visual voices guide)". Behind The Voice Actors. Retrieved May 6, 2021. A green check mark indicates that a role has been confirmed using a screenshot (or collage of screenshots) of a title's list of voice actors and their respective characters found in its opening and/or closing credits and/or other reliable sources of information.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: postscript (link)
