Television talk-show hosts Regis Philbin and Larry King are two of the more unlikely stars joining Justin Timberlake, Mike Myers, Eddie Murphy and Cameron Diaz as the voices behind the characters in “Shrek the Third.”

They join a long list of celebrities who have lent their services to the cartoon industry, pushing specialist “voice actors” out of the picture.

Animated-film companies are super-keen to hire household names because of the increased publicity, and A-listers love to score family-friendly bonus points and cash in at the same time.

But when the credits roll, it can be surprising to put a name to that familiar voice you’ve spent the whole movie trying to pin down.

Here are our top 10 examples:

1. Mickey Mouse in “Steamboat Willie” (1928). A then-unknown Walt Disney, age 27, was the original squeaky voice of his most famous character. He spoke the round-eared rodent’s lines for 18 years until sound-effects man Jim MacDonald took over.

2. Peg the dog (and others) in “Lady and the Tramp” (1955). Jazz- and torch-song great Peggy Lee took a break from performing to record the voices of Tramp’s jilted girlfriend, along with the cats Si and Am, and the human Darling. She was paid $3,500 a week but sued Disney in 1991 to receive a $3.83 million share of video profits.

3. King Louie in “The Jungle Book” (1967). Beloved musical entertainer Louis Prima, dubbed “King of the Swingers,” gave his voice to the exuberant orangutan king who danced with radio comic Phil Harris’ Baloo, singing “I Wan’na Be Like You.”

4. Z in “Antz” (1998). Woody Allen raised eyebrows when, not long after the Soon-Yi scandal, he voiced the leading character in the computer-animated kids’ flick. He starred alongside Sylvester Stallone, who played another insect. The pair had last appeared together (in flesh and blood) in 1971’s “Bananas,” when Sly was a thug harassing Allen on the subway.

5. Flick in “A Bug’s Life” (1998). Canadian standup comic and actor Dave Foley was the surprise choice to play a misfit bug in, strangely, the second anthropod-themed cartoon blockbuster of 1998, made by Pixar. He obviously got the voice artist’s, er, bug because he later appeared in “Toy Story 2” and the TV version of “Lilo & Stitch.”

6. Bernard in “The Rescuers” (1977). Stammering comedian Bob Newhart was the big name behind the little mouse hired by a children’s rescue society to help those in need. Newhart voiced Bernard again in the 1990 sequel “The Rescuers Down Under.”

7. Scowl the Owl in “Happily Ever After” (1993). Ed Asner is still Lou Grant to most people but he has voiced a huge range of cartoon characters, including the lead bird in the Filmation follow-up to the Disney classic “Snow White.” He also did stints on TV’s “Batman: The Animated Series,” “Gargoyles” and “Freakazoid.”

8. Rocky in “Chicken Run” (2000). Mel Gibson was the token American who played a boastful rooster in the English animated film created by the stop-motion team behind “Wallace and Gromit.” Other assorted poultry were voiced by classic stage and screen actors, including Miranda Richardson and Imelda Staunton.

9. Wreck-Gar in “The Transformers” (1986). British comedian Eric Idle, of Monty Python fame, played one of the dueling robots in the sci-fi fantasy based on the hit ’80s TV series. His co-voices included Leonard Nimoy, Robert Stack and Orson Welles as the evil, planet-eating Unicron. Jon Voight and John Turturro provide two of the leading voices in the 2007 remake, scheduled for release in July.

10. Nell Van Dort in “The Corpse Bride” (2005). Comic and actress Tracey Ullman was the mother-of-the-groom in Tim Burton’s dark animated comedy, which also showcased the voice talents of Johnny Depp and Burton’s wife, Helena Bonham Carter, who played Wallace’s love interest, Lady Tottington, in “Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit” that same year.