Welcome to episode 232 of the Voice Acting Mastery podcast with yours truly, Crispin Freeman!

As always, you can listen to the podcast using the player above, or download the mp3 using the link at the bottom of this blog post. The podcast is also available via the iTunes Store online. Just follow this link to view the podcast in iTunes:

http://www.voiceactingmastery.com/podcast

I’m eager to share with you the second part of my interview with the multi-talented and Emmy award winning voice actor, Ben Diskin! You may know his work from animated shows like Hey Arnold!, Codename: Kids Next Door, Spectacular Spider-Man, He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, Hulk and the Agents of S.M.A.S.H., and the Muppet Babies! You may also recognize his voice in games like Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth, the Kingdom Hearts series of games, and Date Everything! You may even have heard him in anime shows like Blood+, Naruto Shippuden, Mobile Suit Gundam: The Origin, and Aggretsuko.

In the previous episode, Ben and I explored in detail how he got started as a voice actor. Ben was effectively offered agent representation before he was even born and was acting in commercials at the ripe old age of 3! Since his parents were both actors, they were able to help guide him through the industry, both artistically and professionally. They knew what it took to be believable on-camera, and they had a realistic understanding of the demands of pursuing an acting career.

Ben was exposed to both the joys of acting, and the possible negative ramifications of being a performer at a very early age. He was often typecast, which he found artistically limiting, and he also had to deal with negative feedback from his classmates at school, who assumed he was far more rich and famous than he actually was. All of this contributed to Ben’s desire to pursue voice acting, instead of on-camera acting, as a way to not only escape the typecasting trap, but also to be able to keep his private life and his professional life more separate. As a voice actor, he could act, and still keep his anonymity in everyday life.

While all of that might help explain why Ben left the on-camera world to pursue voice acting instead, I was still curious as to why he wanted to be a performer in the first place? Did he just start at such an early age that it seemed natural? Did he feel like he didn’t have any other choice? Ben answers me quite bluntly: he thinks that he’s an incredibly boring person, and so any opportunity he had to role play as someone else was appealing to him!

As my regular listeners might realize, this surprising answer does seem to contradict many of the ideas I’ve shared on the podcast about an actor valuing themselves and their inner universe of possibilities. So Ben and I dive deep into this subject to see if we can discover if there’s any way to reconcile his approach to acting, and my ideas about the acting process. We get very specific about how he thinks about characters, and what exactly he does to embody them, especially when he’s given very little information on which to base his acting choices.

Since Ben started acting when he was so young, it can be challenging for him to articulate his process. Nevertheless, I encourage you to listen closely to our conversation as I help tease out exactly why Ben got so good at voice acting. You’ll notice in his answers some familiar themes from earlier episodes: he watches a ton of media to understand the different styles of shows, he closely analyzes performances he admires in order to be able to reproduce them himself, he studies his fellow professional colleagues to see what he can learn from them, and he makes sure to physicalize his characters as much as possible. Ben has internalized the fundamentals of voice acting through immersion, intense focus, and repeated practice. Hopefully his story will inspire my listeners to do the same!

Download Voice Acting Mastery Episode #233 Here (MP3)