Ellen McLain is an opera singer and voice actress from Nashville, Tennessee, USA. She provides voices for many characters in several video games from Valve. Among them are GLaDOS, the artificial intelligence antagonist in Portal (for which she won an AIAS Interactive Achievement Award for Outstanding Achievement in Character Performance) and Portal 2, the announcer in Team Fortress 2, and the voice of the Combine overwatch for the Half-Life 2 series.

Ellen McLain is the only person to have her voice in all the games in the Orange Box. McLain sang the ending credits song to Portal, “Still Alive” and Portal 2, “Want You Gone”, both written by Jonathan Coulton. She also sang the opera-style turret song featured at the end of Portal 2, referred to by fans as the Turret Opera.

Ellen is married to John Patrick Lowrie, a fellow voice actor, who also worked on the video games Half-Life 2 and Team Fortress 2. In Half-Life 2, her husband voiced a citizen who assists the protagonist. In Team Fortress 2, Lowrie plays the Sniper. John is also a science fiction author.