How to Become a Voice Actor (Without Sounding Like Everyone Else)

There’s a lot of advice out there on how to become a voice actor — some of it great, some of it mostly about microphones. Lists of equipment. Demos. Mic technique. And while those things matter, they’re not what got me started.

I didn’t grow up dreaming of voiceover. But I did grow up listening. To the tone of a scene. The way someone tells a story. To the relaxed shape a voice takes when no one’s trying too hard. Years later, that instinct is what led me to the mic — not a course, not a checklist. Just an interest in voice, words, and sound.

I started by recording a few short pieces in my living room. Nothing fancy. Just me, a cheap mic, and a few paragraphs from a book I had lying around. That was enough. I didn’t have an agent for voice work then. I didn’t even call myself a voice actor. But I had something to say — or rather, a way to say it, I guess, and I followed that.

Voiceover is a strange career in that much of it happens in silence. You record, you edit, you send files off into the ether and hope something connects. But it’s also a deeply emotional craft. You're building a mood. Carrying an idea. Giving weight to something that might otherwise be flat.

If you’re wondering how to get into voice acting, here’s the truth: there is no one way. Some people train relentlessly through voiceover workshops or courses. Others pick it up from adjacent careers — acting, radio, storytelling. I came into it from film and television. The overlap is real, but the stillness is different.

You’ll need some tools eventually. A decent mic. A space that sounds good (even if it’s a blanket fort at first — I’ve been there). But what you really need is an ear. And a tone that feels like yours. Not just technically clean, emotionally real.

It also helps to work with your voice in other ways. I sing, so that helps me. I read aloud a lot — mainly to maintain proper pronunciation, especially in Danish, since I primarily communicate in American English these days. I record drafts I never send (much like I do with my illustration sketches — more on that here) just to hear how something lands. That’s all part of the work.

If this sounds like something you might love, you don’t need to wait for perfect conditions. You can start now. Read something. Record it. Play it back. What feels true? What sounds like you, not the voice you think they want, but the one you already carry?

That’s where it begins. Want to hear how I work behind the mic? Explore my voiceover page — with blog posts, behind-the-scenes notes, and samples recorded from my Copenhagen studio, or visit my IMDb profile to see selected film and TV work.