Lin Gallagher:Voice Actor:Zombies, Queens, and Drunken Sheep

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Magazine article (Canvas Rebel)

Discover the captivating world of voiceover as we delve into the experiences and insights of Lin Gallagher. 

From impersonations to evil queens, Lynne shares her journey in voice acting and how she found her true passion in the field. 

She takes us through the challenges and triumphs she has faced, providing valuable advice to aspiring voice actors. 

Learn about the art of creating unique voices and the importance of acting skills in bringing characters to life.
 
From zombies to drunken sheep, Lin Gallagher discusses the varied roles she has played and the joy she finds in the versatility of voice acting. 

Join us for an inspiring conversation with Lin Gallagher as she shares her love for voiceover and her vision for the future.

Subscribe to the Women of the Northwest podcast for inspiring stories and adventures.
Find me on my website: jan-johnson.com

Transcript

[00:00] Jan: I would like to welcome Lynn Gallagher to our podcast episode today. Welcome, Lynn.

[00:05] Lin: Thank you. Thank you. Very happy to be here.

[00:09] Jan: This is going to be fun. So you do voiceover. Tell me about the path that led you to do that.

[00:18] Lin: Well, I've always been interested in language and communication and my mother was an english teacher originally, and she rose up the ranks of british education to become quite a well known, you call them principals here, head teacher. And she taught a lot of different ethnicities of children. She was very, very keen on getting language, language teachers, special language teachers in to teach English to the kids that were struggling because her school was in a multicultural area. So language communication, she used to make tapes and tell stories on tapes to bring the children. All that sort of thing has been with me for a long time. She also encouraged me to read a lot when I was a child, which I'm very grateful for because if you read, if you enjoy reading, you can never be bored. So the written word, the spoken word has always been important to me. And when I was younger, I was very gregarious. I wasn't particularly happy on my own unless I had a book on my own. I like to be around people very much. So that's always been appealing to me. So years ago, when I was a young mother, I wanted something to do apart from just looking after the baby. It could be quite lonely, can't it? Just looking after the baby all the time, you can lose a sense of yourself. And there were some classes for voiceover, and I thought, that's interesting because quite a few people have told me that I'm good at impressions and that I can tell, make funny voices and do funny things and all that, although that isn't all voice acting, as you know, it's acting is important anyway. But in those days, you had to have your demo tape, your samples on a cassette tape, which you would then have to drive all over the place. And it was time consuming and you had to be really, really keen in order to try and start from the bottom in those days. And I went to a few classes, thoroughly enjoyed them, was advised to continue doing it, but it wasn't viable with being a mum as well. Jumped 20 years to the digital age. And now, of course, all the auditions, all the work, look at it, it's all done at home, so it's much, much easier. It's much, much easier to find an agent, you know, etcetera. And I made my own demo, juiced my own demo, added music to the demo and nobody knew it was homemade. They all thought it was professional, so I decided I would make a demo, do a lot of study, listen to commercials, go to classes. I found a fantastic, what they call a workout group where you're with professionals and beginners, and you all give notes on each other's performances, and you're in a booth, but you have an audience there. And they are all, we all have the same interest. It was brilliant. And then I thought, okay, I'm ready. So I started to apply to agents. How did I get my first job? I was on Twitter, which I never used, except for voiceover, because I can't stand the platform itself. I followed game developers, video game developers, and there was one of them who was developing a game called Guild wars two. I hate all that stuff. I've never played a video game in my life. But I reached out to this guy who was a writer, and I said, I'd love to drip with evil all over your game. He knew that I was a voice actor from my bio, and he got back to me, and he was a really well known writer. And he said, do you have an agent? And I said, yeah, I just got one. And he said, all right, I'll send you an audition. So he sent me an audition, and I booked it. So I. I booked my first union job in Burbank in a big, posh studio. And when I came out of the audition, I was playing an evil person. I always do. The producer said, oh, it's so great to actually work with a professional. And I went to the car and I rang my husband and I said, this is my first job. My first job. He thought I was a professional, so we were often away. But the thing is, I mistakenly thought I did so well at that that I'm now a famous voice actor. So I stopped going to thrift shops and I bought a blouse in a real shop. But of course, it doesn't work like that. It's like any actor. It's up and down. You have to work so hard. And then if you get to a certain level, then it's easier to get jobs. But of course, it's very difficult to get a job. But I've always loved it. I've had a lot of different jobs, and this is my passion.

[05:29] Jan: Oh, my gosh. What are some specific things on how you train? Like how do you protect or work with your vocal cords and your voice?

[05:41] Lin: There are tricks if you have a three or four hour session booked, the main thing is to keep hydrated. Now, sometimes the talent can't hear if their throat's getting dry. But the producer, who has all the really sensitive equipment, can. So often in a session, they'll say, can you have a sip of water? Can you have a sip of water? Now, one way to get rid of that possibility of dryness is to eat a slice of green apple. There is a product called emergency, which is granulated vitamin C that you put in water. And if you use a tiny bit of it, not the whole sachet, it makes you salivate a lot. Hydrating the whole day before a session. The day of is kind of a little late. And then as far as extreme vocal work, I haven't done many zombies. I did one the other day. I did one the other day. I had to make zombie noise. I have the weirdest, weirdest job. I have to be a queen of England and then have to be a zombie, and then I have to be a drunken sheep, and then it's never dull.

[06:54] Jan: Could you give us a sample of your zombie voice? I don't think I've ever heard a zombie.

[07:00] Lin: Well, zombies don't say words. They just make noises. And I had to be walking just to give you a little setup. Had to be walking, smell a human, turn around, attack the human, and then kill the human. Oh, the stuff of nightmares. So it would be something like. Something like that.

[07:34] Jan: Oh, my God.

[07:36] Lin: And then after that, I had to be. Oh, what's her name? The beauty and the beast. Angela Lansbury singing the Beauty and the Beast. That was the audition.

[07:48] Jan: After that, a complete opposite.

[07:50] Lin: Yes. But I was. I had burned my throat out, so I did actually hurt myself. Luckily, I don't do zombie noises and stuff very rarely, so I. If I had to do a lot of that, I would definitely seek instruction as to how to use my vocal cords differently.

[08:09] Jan: Yeah, when you auditioned for the zombie, they came to you or you went to them or what happened. Well, I mean, like, that's not normal. Your zombie stuff is totally normal.

[08:25] Lin: No, I don't usually do zombie stuff, but my agents send me all sorts of things for video games, and usually I'm the evil icy queen in a video game, but they censored anyway, just in case I wanted to give it a go. I didn't. I didn't book it, by the way. There's lots of people who. Carl would have been better at that one. You know, there's a lot of. A lot of people that do that much more than I do.

[08:53] Jan: Yeah. Because he actually did a little zombie short, too. Oh, right.

[08:58] Lin: Okay. Yeah.

[08:59] Jan: I don't know if you've seen that back in the day, huh? That is. And then how do you decide or figure out how to do different voices? Because you have a range of them.

[09:11] Lin: I do, yeah. Like any acting, if you're given a character in voice acting, they give you a very short character bio. So they might say, okay, we want Jan Johnson. We want, we want someone who is, is kind, but, but will not tolerate. I'm not, not saying it's you, but will not, I'm just borrowing your name. Kind, but will not tolerate dishonesty. She's got a lot in her past about loss, and that's, that's all she'll give you. And then they'll give you a role with dialogue. So you have to, like any actor, you have to take on where that person is coming from and where they were even before they said this stuff and what their specific sensitivities are or what their goal is, what their stakes are. And when you've answered those questions, in my case, a voice will appear that suits it. You know, I do voice match, which means they might send me a small piece of dialogue from Helen Mirren, but in the actual film, she was turning away, or they added that line, or for whatever reason, she didn't do that line. So I have to then sound just like Helen Mirren. If in the situation with the character I was telling you about, Helen Mirren's kind of voice would suit that character, then I'll use that kind of voice. Also, being british, they sometimes distinguish between RP, which is received pronunciation, which is very posh, like the royals, or they might say working far or somewhere in the middle, or Thames estuary or northern England or something. So sometimes I get a big clue and luckily I'm good with dialect.

[11:02] Jan: Yeah, yeah. And I guess you just, you just have to train your ear to voices to be able to translate them into creating them. Correct.

[11:13] Lin: Yeah. I mean, I'm not a young woman, so I've got experiences. So when you've experienced a lot of people, a lot of situations, a lot of years, you take on, you remember characters and you can bring them into your portfolio.

[11:30] Jan: Yeah, yeah.

[11:31] Lin: If you like tool book.

[11:34] Jan: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so you were queen Wixam in.

[11:40] Lin: Yes.

[11:41] Jan: One princess. That was pretty amazing.

[11:44] Lin: That was fun.

[11:46] Jan: Another wicked voice.

[11:48] Lin: Yeah, she, she's so snotty, isn't she? It was such fun session. It was in person. And so they have a camera facing me, camera on my face or probably on the top half of me, because you do move around when you're, when you're acting. And they record me first, and then they draw the character. So they match the mouth, really character to what I'm saying. Yeah. So the fun thing with animation is, and I learned this in my workout groups, with animation, you need to be as out there and as funny and as extreme as you can be, because that's the freedom of animation. It's not really real people.

[12:33] Jan: Yeah.

[12:34] Lin: They have to be rooted in real people in order to be believable. On the other hand, video game is all dramatic. Animation is all comedy. So the fun part about that was they allowed me to go for it. Now, I didn't know I was going to be singing, and I was a bit shy about it. So I thought, right, I'm just gonna. I'm just gonna go. And it turned out to be the funniest part of the film because I got to the highest note that I didn't think I'd be able to reach. And I sustained that high note until it fell apart. It was just awful. And they loved it. And in the actual film, that she sings that note and the king goes like that. So. So they make jokes around what you do, which is rather fun, you know?

[13:24] Jan: Yeah, yeah, that would be fun. A lot more fun, too. And it is just because a real play or something, you wouldn't want it to end up being so humorous, maybe, you know, as you would in something that.

[13:39] Lin: Exactly, yeah.

[13:40] Jan: Yeah.

[13:41] Lin: I did an audio drama. It was like a radio play, like what we're doing, except there's no visual at all. And there were two people in the role. I was a wife, and there was a guy playing my husband. And it was extremely difficult. Subject matter was very dramatic. Very, very dramatic. It wasn't paid. I wanted to do it for experience. And that, again, was pushing yourself to the edge of a human being's emotions. To keep the story. To keep a long story short, the couple had lost their college age daughter to murder. The husband wanted to forgive the killer, and it was making the wife incense that he would want to. So it was very interesting. It was a very interesting subject matter.

[14:34] Jan: Yeah.

[14:36] Lin: She wanted him to suffer more anger than he was willing to do. It's really about how we're very different, in how we're all very different, in how we react and deal with things.

[14:48] Jan: And in the midst of that, I would think that it brings in questions about your relationship. So that's not the person I thought you were, that you'd forgive somebody like that.

[14:58] Lin: She was absolutely incensed. In fact, the beginning of the play, she's leaving him. And then the play is the conversation between them, which obviously reaches peaks and at the very end she doesn't say, okay, I understand, but she sort of says, I need time. And she goes up, back upstairs with a suitcase. They both learn a lot, but it was very, very interesting, but so dramatic. So the beauty of acting is that you can go to all these extremes of human condition, you know. I love it.

[15:33] Jan: Yeah. What has been your most fun thing to have done a voice for?

[15:40] Lin: I did love the Queen Wixon one. I thought that was great. That was great fun, I would say. I did an audition for. I did a booking, I did a job for a video game and I had to some. I don't really understand video game, but there's various different levels. There's players and then there's in game players and I don't get it, but my character had to say the same thing quite a lot of times in a different way. And when you've reached twelve ways of saying no, you're like, you know. And the director was so funny, he said, let's do it with a ham sandwich. I said, what are you talking about? And he said, would you like a ham sandwich? And I said no. And he said, are you sure you don't want a ham sandwich? And I went, and then he said, why won't you have a ham sandwich? Why don't you? What? And I went, no. And he got me to say no in another ten ways. Yeah. So fun. It was great fun. That was a good one. I like that one.

[16:44] Jan: That's fascinating.

[16:45] Lin: Yeah, yeah. He was a good director. That is good directing. And then I did one for. In Formula One racing, there is a famous racer called Sebastian Vittel and he was retiring and I got to do. It was actually Aston Martin was his car, his team, and Aston Martin is british, so they wanted a british accent to do a bit of a cheeky ad. And at the end he turns the camera and winks and I thought, oh, that's good, that's great. I like that one. And I got to do my very, very, very smooth, luxurious voice for that, you know. So, yeah, that was fun. There's lots of fun ones.

[17:32] Jan: Yeah, yeah.

[17:33] Lin: You know, sometimes the auditions are more fun than the actual job.

[17:39] Jan: Because you are trying on different as you're doing it.

[17:43] Lin: Exactly.

[17:44] Jan: Yeah, yeah. Taking on a new Persona of who you are. What are some challenges?

[17:52] Lin: Good question. I have a written interview. I was interviewed for a couple of magazines and I mentioned this in those written interviews because it was quite poignant. I think I was doing the audio description. That means you describe what's on the screen for people who are sight challenged. So when you're on Netflix, for instance, there's an option that you can have closed caption for people who are deaf or hard of hearing, and then you can have audio description for people who can't see very well. And I really like doing audio description because I have an eye issue, and I only have sight in one eye, so it's sort of personal to me. So I was doing the audio description for a Netflix series about phenomenal doctors around the world, and it was called the surgeon's cut. It wasn't vile, it wasn't gruesome, no big surgery scenes or anything. But the four people, the four episodes based on four different doctors were really beautifully done. One of them worked on children's heart issues while they were still in utero. And he himself had a heart issue that was going to kill him. He knew he was not going to live very long. And he was a lovely indian, gentle, beautiful man with this incredible skill. And he saved a lot of babies. But there was one of those four, which was about a patient with brain tumor. And I had lost a very dear friend a week earlier to brain tumor. Now, when you do audio description, you don't have the script until you get there. So I didn't know what this episode would be about. You just see it on the television. You don't even look at it on paper. It became obvious very quickly that the patient had a brain tumor. I didn't know if the patient was going to survive, but I was hoping that they would because of the nature of the documentary, was how brilliant these doctors are. So I had to make some decisions, because when you're doing audio description, you don't want to get in the way of the viewers experience a bit. So you're not. You're not a character. You're narrating something, but you can't inject your own opinions or emotion. That's not.

[20:14] Jan: And I was so close to home, very.

[20:17] Lin: So I made the decision. My friend's name was Naomi, and she was 44 when she died. So I thought, okay, take Naomi. Take what you're feeling right now about Naomi, and just put it to the side and visualize that you're doing this for her or for people in the future who will have her issue and that will find this helpful or interesting. And then I said to myself, if anything comes up, just ask the producer if you can have a minute, you know, but it's not fair to let it seep through accidentally. I had to sort of make those rigid decisions to do that and I was able to do it. It wasn't as hard as I thought it would be to actually read the words. And the patient did survive. But I felt very jittery when I left that one. Yeah, things like that don't often happen in a career like mine. But again, it was interesting because I learned a bit more about me.

[21:16] Jan: Right, right.

[21:17] Lin: Oh that's. Oh, I just got to mention one more challenging one. I had a very big job for JP Morgan, which I felt a bit guilty about, but big corporations. But as far as my career it was good. And I went into the studio on the west side to do the job and it was 130 2nd commercial, 115 second and then a few six second commercials. So they do all the cuts and it took about two days to do the whole thing. I walked into the session, we got set up just like here, glass window. And then the producers are on the other side of the window and you can hear them, they can hear you and they give you direction and you can see the video of the commercial and usually the client is not involved. But for some reason somebody from JP Morgan was on the call and she had not had her coffee because she said, that's not the voice I hired. I thought, what the heck am I going to do? And it really shattered my self confidence. The producers were lovely young men, very, very, very kind. Everyone in this business is so kind. And this young guy comes in, he goes, don't worry, don't worry. Well, get her off the call. Just pretend she didn't say it. He was so sensitive to it that it actually did affect my whole session, you know. And I said, can I, can, can you tell me something I can do differently? Should I lower my register? Should I up my cheeriness? What should I do? You know? He said, just be you, don't worry. But I didn't enjoy that session. It was the only session I've ever not enjoyed because I kept imagining this woman, you know, but it worked out okay. In fact, they just renewed it for another year. So they must have been all right in the end.

[23:12] Jan: Yeah, that would be nerve wracking. It would just kind of. What am I supposed to. How do I be. Because you don't. She couldn't even tell you.

[23:21] Lin: No, no, I think she was just in a bathroom.

[23:27] Jan: So what's next? What's, what's your vision?

[23:30] Lin: This is the most I've got out of anything I've ever done. And I want to continue doing this until I die. The good news is I can, because I can be old. I can be 103 and play 103 women. In fact, I often do play very old, old sort of spirits and things. My vision is literally to continue doing this. I'm so lucky. They always say, you know, if you, if you love what you do, that's it, you know, if you love what you're paid for. And I've only been doing this about professionally about eight years. I've been doing it all together about 13 years. And so I've done lots of other things, and I was quite good at some of them, but none of them have given me the satisfaction of this. I find it just the perfect job for me.

[24:23] Jan: That's awesome. I assume the pay is adequate.

[24:27] Lin: It's always adequate. But like any acting, it's not. It's not consistent. Right. So I can get paid. Oh, that was fantastic. I got paid $700 for 35 minutes of work, and then I don't get anything for four weeks.

[24:43] Jan: Right.

[24:44] Lin: You know, that's what acting is. The other thing you'd ask me about my goals. I love helping other people. I have a friend who started in voiceover, and she also does on camera. She's about my age. She looks quite commercial. She's very naturally approachable. You know, short hair, very, very sort of fashionable, lovely personality, german american. And she wanted to start up in voice acting. And I was directing her in her auditions, and I thought, oh, this is great. I'm a good director. I would like to direct and teach. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, that's definitely one of my goals.

[25:23] Jan: Let me ask you one more thing. What would you say to someone who thought they wanted to start voice acting?

[25:31] Lin: It's not enough for someone to say, you've got a nice voice, or, I like the voices you do. That is not enough. You have to learn how to improvise and act, because if a director hears you doing an audition that doesn't sound 100% authentic, you will not book the job. And to be authentic, you have to act. So a lot of the auditions now, at the end of the advice in the audition, they say nothing announcery. Right? Now, that sort of formal announce announcing style is completely inappropriate. I should be selling something the way I'm talking to you now, like I'm talking to a friend, rather than buy this, because if you don't buy this, you'll regret it. You know, that doesn't happen anymore. It would be, oh, Jan, you've got to try this. Brilliant. Won't tell anyone, though, right? That sort of thing. So acting, don't just take it up because you're good at it. You have a nice voice and you can do daffy. Duh. And then work, work, work. Listen. Listen to everything on tv. Try and identify dialects. Practice, practice, practice. Read the phone book if you have to.

[26:50] Jan: Phone book? What is that anyway?

[26:52] Lin: No, I know. I'm very lucky, though, because I don't have to do this to pay the rent. Like, 18 year olds have to act and get enough jobs to, you know, be okay. I don't have to do that at this point because I'm. I am very good at it. And, you know, Frank and I are further along in our lives. And it's not this, you know, I've got to be an actor. Gotta be an actor. It's not that. So I don't audition. I leave it alone. I don't even care if I get it. That's how you're supposed to do it. Otherwise you'll be miserable.

[27:26] Jan: Well, and there's experience in the interviews, you know, the auditions. There's, you know, absolutely always gained something.