Violet Parr is a fictional superheroine in Pixar's animated superhero film The Incredibles (2004) and its sequel, Incredibles 2 (2018). The eldest child and only daughter of superheroes Bob and Helen Parr (Mr. Incredible and Elastigirl), Violet is born with the superhuman abilities to render herself invisible and generate force fields. Voiced by Sarah Vowell, Violet is a shy junior high school student who longs to fit in with her peers, a task she believes is hindered by her superpowers. Throughout the course of the films, Violet matures and gradually becomes more confident in herself and her powers.
Violet's creator, screenwriter and director Brad Bird, decided to give her invisibility because he felt that this specific superpower represents some of the challenges teenage girls experience growing up, namely insecurity and defensiveness. Bird cast Vowell as Violet upon hearing her contribute a real-life story about her father to the radio program This American Life, with Violet ultimately becoming Vowell's first voice-acting role. Vowell identified with the character's shy, insecure nature, in addition to observing parallels between Violet's relationship with Bob and her relationship with her own father. New computer technology was developed to animate Violet's hair, which animators described as the most difficult part of The Incredibles since that much hair had never been featured in a computer-animated film before. The character's hair serves as an important aspect of Violet's character development, which demonstrates her growing self-confidence as she gradually ceases to hide behind it.
Reception towards Violet has been positive, with film critics commending her character development and relatability, as well as Vowell's vocal performance. Critics have also heavily compared Violet to the comic book superheroine the Invisible Woman, whose superpowers she shares. The character's likeness has since been used in several tie-in media and merchandise associated with the films, including toys, books and video game adaptations.
Development Creation and casting Screenwriter and director Brad Bird conceived Violet as "a 14-year-old teenage girl who just wants to be invisible". In early drafts of the screenplay, Violet was depicted as an infant as opposed to a teenager, since parents Bob and Helen Parr were originally intended to be introduced as retired superheroes much earlier during the film. Violet is voiced by American author and actress Sarah Vowell, who related that she was offered the role unexpectedly. While beginning to cast the film's main characters, Bird had been listening to the National Public Radio program This American Life, to which Vowell is a frequent contributor. During one of Vowell's regular appearances on the show, Bird heard her contribute an anecdote about a cannon she had helped her father, a gunsmith, build. Bird wanted to cast Vowell based on her description of the event, deciding that she was "perfect" for the role, which he immediately called to offer her. Vowell had already earned a reputation for declining several voice acting jobs prior to The Incredibles, to the point at which her agent warned Bird not to waste his time. However, Vowell states that she simply avoided pursuing voice roles in general because she was content being a writer and found few animated projects particularly interesting prior to The Incredibles.
The animators animated a rough test sequence to some of Vowell's dialogue from the radio segment about her father's cannon, in which Violet is depicted being startled by a gun that repeatedly fires in her hands. Despite experiencing some hesitation due to having never voiced an animated character before, Vowell accepted the role after receiving an e-mail from the film's producer, agreeing to participate in The Incredibles because she believes that Pixar is consistently "the best at what they do", comparing the offer to politician Nelson Mandela "asking for your help to fight racism". She had also been a long-time fan of Bird's work as a filmmaker. Vowell ultimately accepted the role based on a sole image she had been sent of the character: a drawing of Violet surrounded by her schoolmates, all of whom appear to be happy and outgoing apart from Violet herself, who is instead hunched over and hiding behind her hair. Vowell concluded, "I can be that kid. I was that kid. I love that archetype of the morose, shy, smart-alecky teenage girl."
IndieWire contributor Oliver Lyttelton believes that Vowell was the most unexpected of Bird's casting decisions. Vowell has said that, like Violet, she herself "is a little smart-alecky and also has a weird dad with a strange hobby", finding the unique dynamic between Violet and Bob similar to her relationship with her own father, particularly the combination of affection, sarcasm and confusion that both she and her character feel towards their respective parents. Vowell expounded that she tends to resemble "a wise guy" in conversation with her father and believes that her tone of voice possibly influenced Bird's decision to cast her as a teenager. Vowell admitted that she shares Violet's "inability to stop pushing people's buttons", citing their tendency to voice their opinions about any given topic and gift for making various situations awkward as similarities.
Voice Sarah Vowell found the recording process somewhat similar to working in radio, apart from the fact that the process required more standing, gesturing and working closely with a director. The film also required Vowell to deviate from her typically underplayed, deadpan delivery due to animation being broader in tone and demanding more "exclamation", identifying the process as more similar to stage than film acting because, like the former, "animation ... require[s] more and bigger things." She revealed that voicing a teenage girl involved more acting than she had been expecting since she was "raised to be a stoic person." For the scene in which Violet and her family's plane crashes into the ocean, Vowell drank from a water bottle while gurgling and gulping to simulate the sound of a person drowning. Despite using a towel as a bib, Vowell still got considerably wet during the process. Vowell found the process of producing non-verbal sounds such as laughing, yawning and screaming on cue to be the most difficult component of the job, a task that working in radio had hardly prepared her for. During her first recording session, the actress struggled to sound as though she had just been hurt and thus asked Bird to hit her arm to help her replicate the sound of being punched. Vowell recorded her character's screams closer towards the end of filming in order to preserve her voice, calling the process "fun" and claiming, "I don't think I had screamed ... for about 20 years" at that point.
Vowell found the opportunity to voice a superheroine "thrilling" because she considers herself to be "more of a walking Woody Allen movie" in real life due to her fears of driving and swimming, joking that it is "fun to listen to my voice do things [in film] that ... it would never get to do." Vowell also admitted that she tends to sound "cartoonish" and young for her age, elaborating that voicing Violet "lead[s] into some of my insecurities ... when you worry you sound like a cartoon and then someone sends me a message [asking] do I want to be in an animated movie … I guess I am who I am." Bird maintains that Vowell "knocked it out of the park" with her performance, although Vowell claims that her acting required a lot of additional direction due to being less experienced, believing that Bird was drawn to "the extra challenge of an unformed performer." Producer Nicole Paradis Grindle agreed that Vowell "genuinely thinks the way Brad [Bird] wants Violet to think", which contribute to her deliveries being "spot-on". Despite her success, Vowell maintains that she is not an actress, describing herself as merely "a writer moonlighting" as an actress for The Incredibles and insisting that she would be "mortified" if she were required to act in the presence of anyone apart from Bird, whose directing she trusts greatly, explaining, "I trust that he'll be able to find something in me or he'll be able to inspire something in me, and he'll also be able to find the take that is the best one."
Vowell stars in a documentary about her work in the film, Vowellet: An Essay by Sarah Vowell, which is included as a bonus feature on The Incredibles''' 2004 DVD release. In the "video essay", Vowell discusses the various differences between voicing a superhero and becoming an action figure while she was writing about presidential assassinations, contrasting the two distinct careers. The animators also animated Violet to some of Vowell's dialogue from the documentary. Bird, who voices costume designer Edna Mode, was the only other actor Vowell recorded with while working on both films. The director would sometimes temporarily provide the voices of other characters for Vowell to act opposite of, such as Elastigirl in lieu of actress Holly Hunter. For Incredibles 2, Vowell had not been allowed to read the entire script while recording her dialogue, having only been allowed to preview small excerpts in which Violet is speaking or having conversations with other characters. Until watching the film for the first time, Vowell had been under the impression that Incredibles 2 would mostly be about Violet's anger at her father until experiencing the film's other storylines and characters. Despite 14 years separating the releases of the first and second films, Vowell did not find resuming the role to be difficult, identifying Violet as a character to whom she feels "closely tied", having played her for approximately one-third of her life. Syfy Wire's Heather Mason observed that Vowell shares her dry sense of humor with Violet. To-date, the Incredibles films remain Vowell's only animated film roles.
Personality and design Bird had always been more interested in developing the personalities of the film's main characters than their superpowers. When it came time to determine the Parr family's powers, Bird decided to draw inspiration from the roles of typical nuclear family members, basing both their superpowers and personalities on these traditional archetypes. Describing Violet as "a typical teenager ... not comfortable in her own skin" who resides "in that rocky place between being a kid and an adult", Bird felt that invisibility would be the most suitable power for the Parr family's only daughter. Describing her as a young woman who would much prefer if other people avoided looking at her, Bird elaborated that some teenage girls are prone to feeling insecure and defensive, and thus gave her the abilities to become invisible and create protective shields. According to Vowell, Violet's superpowers of invisibility and force fields are, much like the rest of her family, "psychologically representational of who she is"; a teenage girl who longs to remain hidden and protected; the actress described her as a young woman "trapped between childhood and maturity, between self-confidence and insecurity" like many teenagers. Bird sought to balance the adventurous and "ordinary" components of the family's lives, explaining that audiences would appreciate and relate to moments when Violet uses her powers in the event that she feels humiliated. In terms of music, composer Michael Giacchino developed a theme for Violet that he described as "coy and mysterious".