By Christina Costello.
I’ve spent the last ten years or so of my life chasing my dreams of being an actress. I’ve taken classes, workshops, worked on indie projects, not so indie projects, and more. But one of my dreams since I was a child was to be a voice actress.
When I first found out *who* Veronica Taylor was, and that she was in fact voicing my childhood hero, Ash Ketchum, that’s when I realized,”wow, that’s what I want to do!”
Unfortunately, I didn’t quite understand what voice acting was when I was younger, so I never was able to vocalize that that was in fact, what I wanted to do. Instead I played a ton of video games, absorbed every anime and cartoon I watched, and kept daydreaming. Eventually, I was able to start making some form of a small name for myself as a New England based actor.
However, I am chronically ill. It’s not something I keep secret, but it is something I’ve tried to push through for years. I was born with a rare lung disease, CPL, and have almost died twice. Those near death experiences made me realize that life is just too short to keep putting what you want to do, on hold. That’s when my dream started to really come into reality.
Last year, out of a whim I decided to join a voice acting group on facebook. There was a casting call posted that I honestly didn’t feel I was fully qualified for, but I knew I had to do everything in my power to find a way to be seen at an audition. The casting call was to do children’s voices for a children’s nursery rhyme YouTube channel. I wrote to them being upfront and honest, I did not have a voice acting reel but my day job was working for a children’s performance company, so I had plenty of experience doing voices in person. I sent them my regular acting reel, and somehow, some way, they liked it and gave me the sides to audition. At the time, I was working with my vocal coach already, so I told her about the audition and she helped me figure out how to “find my voice,” something that has helped me immensely when auditioning for projects now.
I got lucky, I really did. I ended up booking the project and I work fairly consistently a couple times a week now for the last six months. I actively work with a vocal coach to hone my craft, and practice daily. It has not been an easy journey, and I am still learning, but I am so happy to be doing something I genuinely love now. Now I am auditioning for video games, anime dubs, cartoons, and working on securing an agency to help me move forward to the next level. All because I pushed for a chance to audition for something I knew in my heart I could do.
If you have a dream, push for it. You’ll be surprised at what you’re able to do when you put your heart fully into something.
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