Sarah Vowell
In 2004, Vowell provided the voice of Violet Parr, a shy teenager, in the Pixar animated film "The Incredibles", and returned to her role for the film's sequel, "Incredibles 2", in 2018. Additionally, Vowell has also lent her voice to the character for various related video games and "Disney on Ice" presentations in the years following the film's release. The makers of "The Incredibles" discovered Vowell from episode 81 – "Guns" "This American Life", where she and her father fire a homemade cannon. Pixar made a test animation for Violet using audio from that sequence, which was included on the DVD of "The Incredibles". She also wrote and was featured in a documentary included on the same DVD entitled "Vowellett - An Essay by Sarah Vowell", where she reflects on the differences between being superhero Violet and being an author of history books on the subject of assassinated presidents, and what it means to her nephew Owen. Vowell also played Fernanda, Theacher "Aunt" Deborah and Mary Kelly in "The School Future".
Violet Parr
Violet has garnered positive reviews from film critics. "The Washington Post"'s Jennifer Frey described Violet as "instantly familiar as the teenage girl who pines for the cute boy, fights with her little brother and is so uncertain of herself". In addition to praising Pixar's decision to cast the lesser-known Vowell as Violet, Joshua Tyler of CinemaBlend dubbed Violet his "favorite character" in "The Incredibles", praising her many "goose-bump worthy moments as she starts to accept who she is." Commending the multidimensionality of the film's characters in general, Hollywood.com's Julia Emmanuele observed that, through Violet, audiences "understand how awkward and insecure being a teenager can be, even without the addition of superpowers." Vulture.com's Abraham Riesman described Vowell's voice acting as "terrific". In addition to praising Vowell's performance, Carla Meyer of the "San Francisco Chronicle" wrote that the character ultimately "emerges as the most sympathetic member of the family". In a retrospective review, Jonathon Dornbush of IGN cited "Violet’s sense of isolation and misunderstanding" among the main reasons why "The Incredibles" remains "a deeply relatable, enduring film" and "one of Pixar's best". "Slate" film critic David Edelstein acknowledged the difficulty of animating Violet's hair while calling her ability to create force fields as "to die for".