Suzanne Pleshette was an American actress whose extensive career in theatre, film, and television included notable work in voice acting for animated features, including one of the most acclaimed anime films of all time. Born in New York City in 1937, Pleshette trained at the prestigious Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre and began her career on Broadway in the 1950s. She gained widespread recognition for her role as Annie Hayworth in Alfred Hitchcock's thriller The Birds in 1963 and became a beloved television star for her portrayal of Emily Hartley on the CBS sitcom The Bob Newhart Show, which ran from 1972 to 1978 and earned her two Primetime Emmy Award nominations.

Pleshette's voice acting career is distinguished by two prominent roles in the late 1990s and early 2000s. In 1998, she voiced the villainous Zira in Disney's direct-to-video animated film The Lion King II: Simba's Pride, a role for which she also performed the song My Lullaby and received a nomination for an Annie Award for Outstanding Individual Achievement for Voice Acting in an Animated Feature Production. Her most significant contribution to anime came in 2001 when she was cast in the English-language dub of Hayao Miyazaki's Academy Award-winning film, Spirited Away. In what is widely considered her final film role, Pleshette provided the voices for the twin witches Yubaba and Zeniba, the former being the tyrannical proprietor of the bathhouse where the young protagonist, Chihiro, is forced to work. Her performance as the overbearing and greedy Yubaba brought a commanding presence to the English adaptation of the film. This role remains her sole, definitive credit in the anime genre, marking a notable achievement in a career that spanned five decades. Suzanne Pleshette passed away in 2008.