Teri Hatcher is good at making ordinary uncertainty funny, and better still when it becomes unsettling. In Coraline, her ordinary mother's voice remains recognisable in a button-eyed double, which makes the threat harder to keep at a safe distance.
Fi1m perspective
The mother's voice is the useful complication in Coraline (2009): Hatcher makes the ordinary parent and her unsettling double sound closely related. As Mel Jones she is grounded and irritated; as the Other Mother she becomes airier, with something sinister in the welcome. The difference is clear without making them sound like strangers. We were unnerved by the button eyes because the voice still belonged to a parent Coraline knew.
Her television work helps explain why that familiarity comes so readily. Lois Lane in Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman (1993–1997) established her as a sparky leading player, while Paris Carver in Tomorrow Never Dies (1997) took her into a Bond film. After a stretch with fewer roles, Desperate Housewives (2004–2012) renewed her prominence as Susan Mayer, whose vulnerability and clumsiness made domestic comedy out of uncertainty. It is the anxious, approachable side of her acting that matters most to the work we value here.
That sort of casting has limits, and we would not ask for endless variations on the klutzy woman. Clumsiness can become a convenient way to make a character seem endearing before she has done much else. In Coraline, Hatcher sounds irritated, and the film takes the child's dissatisfaction with that parent seriously. There is no need to make Mel especially charming to secure our interest. That irritation gives the more inviting voice of the Other Mother a reason to appeal.
Henry Selick understands how little explanation those button eyes need. Hatcher's double casting helps him keep the threat close to home, rather than importing a voice that has no place in the child's life. The idea is simple enough for children to understand and unpleasant enough to bother the adults beside them. Start with Coraline, but do not assume an animated parent is suitable company just before bed.
Biography
Teri Hatcher is an American actress. Born on 8 December 1964 in Palo Alto, California, she studied mathematics and engineering at De Anza College and trained at the American Conservatory Theater. She was a cheerleader for the San Francisco 49ers before beginning her acting career.
She is known for her role as Lois Lane in the television series Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman (1993–1997) and as Susan Mayer in Desperate Housewives (2004–2012). For the latter she won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy Series and three Screen Actors Guild Awards. Hatcher voiced Mel Jones and the Other Mother in the animated film Coraline (2009) and played Paris Carver in the James Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies (1997).
