The VO Road Map & Sign Posts
Here’s a bit more detailed road map of what you can do to become a professional voice actor:
- Focus first on the process of exploring the fun and enjoyment of acting, not seeking money or fame. Agents and demos are for later.
- Determine whether you have the talent and temperament for acting by getting as much live performing experience as possible.
- “Going pro” means you must get good enough that people will pay you to do it.
- Turn on your mind, your curiosity, your capacity to create in any way you can.
- Find things you love doing and never stop doing them.
- Watch old movies & TV. Fill your inner “performer’s database” with the history of show biz.
- Focus on your health: workout, eat clean and get enough sleep.
- Read. A lot. Out loud as well as to yourself.
- Strengthen your acting ability and improv confidence with live performance experience and classes.
- Develop strong voice over skills (maintaining character, diction, reading stamina, range of accents and character, e.g.)
- It is an actor’s job is to be always ready to take advantage of opportunity and luck.
- Get a flexible side job(s). Save your money for a long haul.
- An actor should expect and plan for uncertainty, change and a long climb, no matter your experience or ability.
- When ready, move to where higher level creatives congregate to connect with them. Go to where they cast the kind of work you want to do. This is probably best done in stages, after establishing yourself in a smaller market.
- Connect with working voice actors and others heading where you want to go. Surround yourself with those who keep the positive and drop the negative.
- Honor your relationships. They are your strength and connection to what is real. Real relationships both feed and temper an actor’s ego.
- Get a life: Continually find your fuel beyond and apart from acting.
- Imagine a specific future but stay flexible. Write out your goals and revise as needed. Always affirm your goals to yourself and others out loud.
- Look inside: How do you limit yourself? What are your inner mantras? Investigate and connect with yourself and your life story. Maybe start a journal.
- Embrace mistakes, rejection and dead ends as tools for learning. Always seek an honest take on your work and yourself, even if the truth hurts. Your goals is not to avoid struggle. Your goal is to learn and improve (and have fun).
- Celebrate small victories. Reward yourself. Stay positive.
- Realize your job at an audition or gig is not to ask for something, it is to give/create something compelling and competitive. Your craft is both your validation and your superpower.
- Be ready before you interview agents. Have your marketing materials ready to impress (demo, website, etc.).
- Be so good that those who cast have to hire you– and rehire you.
- Self-direct your VO auditions only when ready and able. Otherwise, seek guidance and input with your reads.
- When ready, join an actors’ union to protect yourself, up your earnings and upgrade the quality of projects and professionalism.
- Never stop pushing your abilities past the success you establish.
“Talent is insignificant. I know a lot of talented ruins. Beyond talent lie all the usual words: discipline, love, luck, but most of all, endurance.” –James Baldwin
This process may seem daunting to a beginner, but I want you to understand that the long term project of becoming a creative entrepreneur (a paid voice actor) is neither quick nor easy. If you find you enjoy performing, the ups and downs of the process can and should be fun (mostly).
Each actor’s path to their art and career is unique.
To be a professional actor, acting must be an intersection of what you love and what you are very good at. Talent or aspiration are not enough.
Should voice actors accept roles that offer only as little as $5.00, or should they only accept roles that offer more than $500? And do you believe it is insulting to a voice actor for not getting offered more than $500?
With those numbers, you’re talking non-union work, I’d say. At that stage, the price for your work is what ever the market will bear. Never be insulted that someone offers you the least they think they can get away with (or are willing to pay). Especially with non-union work, where respect for the artist’s work is minimal. Once you join the union, minimum is defined for you and at a higher rate because much more is expected of your work. You value your work more as well when you commit to union work.
Do we need to be a certain age to start voice acting?
I don’t think you need to be a certain age to start exploring anything.
I am someone who has Autism. My dream is to become a voice actor. Have you ever worked with anyone who has special needs? What kind of unique challenges might I encounter? I work with a job coach who helps me understand what voice acting is about using your website. Do you have any advice for me?
There are successful artists in Hollywood who have a variety of challenges they have learned to overcome or even leverage to their advantage professionally. I’ve worked with one particular brilliant voice actor who has Aspergers (at leasts that’s what they used to call it). Acting is particularly tricky because it is social and collaborative, not a solo project. Acting relies on understanding and use of social cues that are invisible and part of a kind of shared syntax of emotion and meaning. Much of the acting I talk about is focused on picking up on a variety of social cues or inferences (both from a script and from those in the studio) and creating something from that that most everyone would read right. In any case, I think anyone who wants to try acting or voice acting should. There is a learning curve even for those who are right for it. Just remember it may take time to get acquainted with it enough to see if you have talent for it. Wanting it is not enough if you want to get paid someday.
I am a working father of two and have always had a passion for acting and doing voices. My kids love it and think I should start a career out of it. How do I get started ?
I cover getting starting in acting and VO extensively on my site. Starting a career with a family is particularly challenging as acting isn’t a very solid or lucrative climb. But I know voice actors who started late and work.
As a young aspiring actor from Philadelphia, I find it challenging to find roles and parts and gain exposure to voice acting. Would it be beneficial to take more acting classes in order to make my acting skills more solid? I heard that even professional actors still take acting classes to perfect their craft. Also, what are great ways to audition for voice acting?
You need to be where the auditions are in animation. Anything to strengthen your acting is good, but classes are not the only way. Stage performance, stand up and improv in front of an audience are great pathways to performing and improv confidence. I know established voice actors who still take classes to renew and grow their abilities. I’d prefer you focus on becoming a great performer and getting your improv and vocal skill solid rather than focusing on finding auditions. Build the power of your craft and the work opportunity will find you.