There’s a chapter in Orhan Pamuk’s My Name Is Red narrated by a dog. A director I worked with at the beginning of my career in audiobooks still remembers a Jamaican prostitute in a Napoleonic naval novel whom she felt I captured to a T. I admit to making my evil characters speak like Basil Rathbone when I can. ![]() I am fortunate in having a facility for accents so I tend to mix those in when no specific regional voice is dictated by the author. Sometimes there are historical characters whose voices we know and I have to make at least a nod in the direction of reality. A given character’s voice will be described as high or deep or fluting. Often the voice is dictated by the author. I find some quirk or some pitch for one of the characters in a scene if there isn’t a great deal of age difference or regional accent difference. It’s often a case of making sure there is a contrast within a scene. Understanding that you are an accomplished actor, what is your process for creating the voice for characters? Do you have a cast of characters/voices? How do you match voices to characters? What are some of the favorite characters that you’ve read? Keep the growling characters to a minimum. Quit for the day when I feel my voice wearing out. What are some things you do to protect your voice? My voice doesn’t hold up much beyond that. How many hours a day do you read when you’re on a book?įive or six hours a day. I have a home studio but some publishers like to have their own engineer and a director. Do you work from home, or do you go to a studio? Sometimes historical books need some elucidation. My communication with authors is usually for Fantasy and Sci-Fi titles where the names of places and people are invented. I have to make sure I know the pronunciations of odd or foreign words. ![]() How old are the characters? Obviously gender matters a lot. I need to know if there are specific accents. ![]() I read at first for tone - is it dramatic, is it comic, is it both of those? Tone dictates pace. How do you begin to prepare for an audiobook reading? Do you ever talk to authors? I got a book from him, and slowly built from there. I was trying to get TV and movie and commercial work when I was recommended for audition to the man who ran Books On Tape (as it then was called). How did you get started in this business of reading for cash? Did you have a mentor? His plays have been produced in Los Angeles, Seattle, and New York and he has produced, written and performed in the feature films Breathing Hard and Forfeit. He has recorded hundreds of audiobooks including the works of Orhan Pamuk, Ken Follett and James Joyce’s Ulysses. John Lee has acted in productions at theatres around the country and is about to embark on the role of Malvolio in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night for Parson’s Nose Theatre in Pasadena.
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