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I make my living as a voice actor. I've done everything from audiobooks, commercials, ADR to corporate. The best thing you can do is practice, practice, practice, but with good guidance. The first thing is to love and admit your voice. A lot of people try to sound deeper, more impostured, etc. They try to put on a voice they don't have. And the first thing is to recognise the sound of your voice. Your voice is your voice. You don't have to do anything special with it. Just accept it, understand how it works. It's that easy, it's that hard. There are plenty of schools that teach voice acting. It is a difficult profession to be self-taught, as it requires an ability to "isolate yourself from yourself", as well as being directed by an outside observer. It is exactly the same as learning to act. You can learn from videos, books, but there is no substitute for physical learning with another person. Audiobooks are one of the most difficult genres to work in. They require you to tell the story, but you can't be more of a protagonist than the story. In most of them, I listen more to the narrator than to the story itself, which is a problem, as it is the story that has to transcend. If you are curious, one of the classics to read are Cicely Berry's books "Voice and the actor" and "Freeing the natural voice" from Kristin Linklater. |
I love to read aloud for decades, do a bit of different voices per character... And people seem to like my voice when I moderate our daily rounds or do presentations. I just learned that in the last 12 months, so maybe there is a hidden talent that needs to be unveiled.