From a young age I had a real sense of the world of work. This is what vocational education gives you.
It sucks, but no Long Islands or margaritas when you drink. It has to be straight vodka.
Martinis are glamorous but also so simple because they only have a few ingredients, and you can really taste the vodka.
'Teen Vogue' fortunately has proved you can have smart, political, and fashionable content delivered in one place, and you don't have to choose.
If I can iron out my accent, it opens up another world of possible jobs. Whereas if you have that very strong European accent, it leaves you always being cast as the Hungarian maid or the stripper or whatever. I have voice lessons, and my coach has given me different tongue-twisters to rehearse at home.
If I'm doing a voice-over session, like animation or something, and I'm doing three different voices, you've gotta separate them. You've gotta find the different places and do your different things.
I went to drama school in England, and you spend your first year working on the muscles surrounding the vocal mechanisms. You learn how you support it and create characters through your voice so that became an obsession. So I went to Hollywood thinking, 'Oh, I'm going to be one of the great voice-over artists.'
Think about 'GoodFellas': It could be a textbook on how not to write a screenplay. It leans on voice-over at the beginning, then abandons it for a while, then the character just talks right into the camera at the end. That structure is so unusual that you don't have any sense of what's going to happen next.
I know now that I want to do more voice-over projects. They really have the ability to transport you into the world of whatever movie it is you are working on.
The beauty of voice-over work is that maybe you come in and record once every two weeks for a couple of hours and do a couple episodes a session. It's awesome! You spend an afternoon playing in the booth, and there you have it. It doesn't interfere with much.
Whenever you do an animated project or a voice-over project it's inevitable that part of your personality comes into play.
I love the power of celebrity because you can give voice to the voiceless.
One of the things that I love about voiceover is that it's a situation where - because you're not encumbered by being seen - it's liberating. You're able to make broad choices that you would never make if you were on camera.
When I do a voiceover now, there are always a few people I've borrowed bits off, whether it's their hats or facial hair, who'll say: 'That's so funny; it's obviously based on this guy.' You think, 'It ain't: it's you.' Actors never think characters are based on them.
You don't make a fortune doing cartoons. It's a lot of fun, it keeps you busy, and it's better than a kick in the pants, absolutely. But doing voiceover work doesn't make you rich. It just doesn't.
There's not a fortune to be made doing voiceover work unless you're one of the main voices on The Simpsons. See, there's The Simpsons, and then there's everything else.
I love to do voiceover because, for me, if you know what you're doing, it's simple. No makeup, no costuming, none of the baloney. None of the egos - you don't have to deal with all that crap. I love voiceovers.
When you do voiceover it's such a fun job to be able to do. First of all, you can do it in your pajamas and you don't have to get dressed up for it.
In voiceover, all you have to worry about is your voice and practicing with your voice and then being able to understand what the situation and whatnot is happening. And you have endless amounts of film to perfect the character.
Doing voiceover is so much fun because you can play with the lines as much as you want. You can put a whole bunch of energy into it, jump up and down, whatever you got to do.
