Jim Dale Fears He Cheated JK Rowling Over Harry Potter Voices  7/13/05

Jim Dale fears he cheated Harry Potter author JK Rowling when she hired him to read her children's books for audio tapes - because he wasn't the multi-voiced actor she thought he was.

The British actor, who has won a Grammy Award for his work with the Potter books, was called in to read from Rowling's books after wowing theatergoers in New York in the hit play Travels With My Aunt.

But he insists Rowling thought she was hiring someone who could perform several voices.

He says, "They were looking for someone who could do lots of voices and I was doing a play off-Broadway called Travels With My Aunt - three guys doing 33 characters and they said, 'Let's use Jim Dale, then.'

"So I signed the contract and then they found out that Jim Dale only played the aunt and the nephew; the other two guys played 31 characters between them, so I got the job really on false pretences."

But Dale has more than proved himself since then - he entered the Guinness Book of World Records for voicing 134 different characters in Harry Potter & The Order of the Phoenix.