Who is behind Max Payne: the voice, the face and the creators
James McCaffrey voiced Max in all three games. The face was Sam Lake’s in the first, Timothy Gibbs’s in the second and McCaffrey’s own in the third.
Pictured: Max in Max Payne 3, 2012 — a game screenshot, not a photo
The voice
James McCaffrey
James McCaffrey voiced Max in all three games, released in 2001, 2003 and 2012. For Max Payne 3 he also did the motion capture and gave Max his face, though Rockstar had first announced a recast with an older actor. McCaffrey compared the third game’s Max to Charles Bronson’s Paul Kersey in Death Wish, and the motion-capture work to acting in Avatar.
In Remedy’s Alan Wake series he voiced both Thomas Zane and Alex Casey, and in Control he was Director Trench. An Albany, New York, native born in 1958, McCaffrey died of multiple myeloma on December 17, 2023, aged 65, at home in Larchmont.
The first face
Sam Lake
Sam Lake, born Sami Järvi, wrote the first two games and is Remedy’s creative director; the character is his creation. The first game had no money for actors, so Lake and other Remedy staff played the roles, and photos of Lake’s face became Max’s. Lake’s mother played Nicole Horne and his father Alfred Woden, and Lake dressed up as Max for the comic-panel cutscenes.
The famous grimace has a simple origin, Lake explained in 2023: Max’s face swaps to a squint when he fires, and the game’s screenshots all caught him firing, so that squint is the face everyone saw. In Alan Wake 2, Lake lends his face and motion capture to Alex Casey.
The second face
Timothy Gibbs
For the sequel, a bigger budget let Remedy hire professional actors for the comic panels, and Timothy Gibbs became Max’s face while Lake stuck to writing. The new face does more, too: in Max Payne 2, Max often smirks and moves his eyebrows. Lake still turns up in the sequel, playing characters in its TV shows and on its billboards.
The third face
Why Max went bald
Rockstar made the third game’s Max older, bald and bearded, “more world-weary and cynical than ever,” and fans and critics reacted badly. Rockstar’s answer was a look that changes over the game, with the classic Max in the New Jersey flashbacks. In the story, Max shaves his head himself: after the attack that kills his employer, Rodrigo Branco, he blames himself and quits drinking.
On PC, a 2023 fan mod by AlexSavvy puts Sam Lake’s face on the third game’s Max — more on the mods page.
The Max Payne 3 cast
Who plays whom in São Paulo
Julian Dean plays Raul Passos. Frank Rodriguez is Rodrigo Branco, Benedita Pereira his wife Fabiana and Shirley Rumierk her sister Giovanna; Robert Montano and Dillon Porter play Rodrigo’s brothers, Victor and Marcelo. Babs Olusanmokun is the gang leader Serrano, Stephen Girasuolo Detective Wilson Da Silva and Ubirajara de Castro the police commander Armando Becker.
Dan Houser, Michael Unsworth and Rupert Humphries wrote the script. TechTudo’s Brazilian reviewer objected that Portuguese actors voiced the main Brazilian characters, accent and all.
The creators
Who made Max Payne, and who owns it
Remedy Entertainment, a Finnish studio in Espoo started in 1995 by people from the demoscene group Future Crew, made the first two games; 3D Realms signed the first one and backed it. On December 5, 2001, Take-Two bought the series from Remedy and 3D Realms for $10 million and 970,000 shares. Its label Rockstar Games published the sequel and built Max Payne 3 in its own studios, with Remedy consulting near the end.
As of September 2026, the rights are still Rockstar’s, and Remedy is remaking the first two games as a single title on its Northlight engine, with Rockstar funding and publishing it.
The remake
Who will play Max next?
As of September 2026, Remedy is keeping quiet about the Max Payne 1 & 2 Remake: in August it confirmed that any announcement is up to Rockstar. In October 2023, two months before McCaffrey died, TechRadar reported Lake telling Eurogamer that it was too soon to know whether his own face would return.
More about Max
- Max Payne story and characters: from New York to São PauloArticle
- Max Payne (2001): the original game, its ports and the mobile versionGame
- Max Payne 3 (2012): São Paulo, platforms and what to know before playingGame
- Max Payne 1 & 2 Remake: release date, platforms and newsGame
- Max Payne art and media: cover art, comics, soundtracks and memesArticle
- Max Payne, the 2008 movie: cast, plot and where to watch itArticle
The story behind the faces
Mona Sax, Valkyr, the Inner Circle and how each game ends, told game by game.
Read the story