Christine Cavanaugh

In Babe (1995), Christine Cavanaugh makes a piglet sound as though he is taking the other animals seriously. His politeness could have made him unbearable: a small animal demonstrating correct behaviour for the benefit of the children watching. Instead, he sounds as though he is still learning, and assumes the other animals are worth listening to even when their expectations leave little room for him. We were moved by that courtesy, because Cavanaugh makes it sound ordinary and sincere.

She came to voice work in 1991, after small live-action television roles in the late 1980s. Chuckie Finster, the anxious toddler in Rugrats (1991), and Gosalyn Mallard, the energetic daughter in Darkwing Duck (1991), gave her quite different children to play. The scratchy, youthful voice was readily recognisable, but it did not prescribe a single temperament. Babe brought that skill to a live-action title role, followed by the boy genius Dexter in Dexter’s Laboratory (1996).

Cavanaugh recorded Rugrats in group sessions, drawing on interactive play-acting. That is a useful detail for an actor whose most affecting work, for us, depends on making speech feel like a response to someone else. In Babe, Chris Noonan’s light touch gives her room to do this without making every exchange a lesson. The film remains funny, and her earnestness does not spoil the joke. A more insistently adorable piglet would have worn out our goodwill well before the film was over.

The reservation is Nigel Westlake’s score, which occasionally insists on feelings the performance has already earned. We sometimes wanted the music to leave Cavanaugh alone; the small voice was doing enough without further encouragement. Noonan’s restraint elsewhere makes those emphatic passages harder to ignore, though they do not undo the film’s tenderness or humour. Start with Babe for Cavanaugh, and listen for how rarely she asks to be found charming.