Do you have “actor voice”??

Okay, so there’s this thing that sometimes happens with actors that like to call “actor voice.” Let me explain.

Actor voice is when something about the performer’s voice sounds or feels inauthentic. As the listener, your bullshit meter starts to siren: “Bull-shit bull-shit! Something about what that person is doing is FAKE. I don’t believe them. They’re not thinking of this in the moment! They planned this!”

Well of course they planned it, they’re following a script! Yet mastering the craft of acting means that the actor need to be able to memorize lines and then say them as if they’re thoughts that are truly arising in the moment. More on that in a minute… first I want to be sure you really understand what I mean about actor voice. Here’s another scenario in which you might notice it:

Let’s say you’re an actor, and you’re outside the audition room waiting to go in. If you listen through the door to the person before you, you can tell that they’re still doing their monologue. Why? Because they’re using actor voice! Whereas if you were listening, and you were confused about whether they were performing or just having a friendly post-monologue chat, they would be using their genuine voice.

Now obviously we want to be genuine when we’re acting. We want to be “dropped in” to our voice, embodied fully, and expressing freely. So let’s hack what exactly is happening during actor voice, because by understanding it we’ll learn what we can do differently. Ready for this? Because it’s actually pretty simple…

When someone is using actor voice, they’re stuck in a vocal pattern.

The pattern could be anything. It could be dropping your energy at the every sentence (which is often accompanied by vocal fry), it could be raising your pitch at the end of every idea (that’s called uptalk or upspeak), or really it could be any particular melody that you’ve gotten stuck in. For instance, a common pattern is unconsciously hitting the same pitch over and over for emphasis.

Here’s the problem: when you’re stuck in a vocal pattern, your listeners are going to get mesmerized by the repetitive tones of your voice. They probably won’t be able to put their finger on it explicitly, but they’ll stop really believing what you’re saying because it’s falling into a predictable pattern. This is when their spidey sense bullshit alarm starts going off.

When we’re truly generating our thoughts in the moment, every thought we utter has a different energy. “I need to go to the store” has a different energy than “Billy don’t forget to make your bed!” has a different energy than “See you at home for dinner tonight.” So how do we get out of actor voice? We break our patterns. And how do we do that? By repeating to ourselves this badass mantra:

Let every thought have its own energy.

If you suffer from actor voice, you are not alone. I don’t even judge you, because succumbing to actor voice is no reflection on your intelligence or your worthiness as an actor. Really, it’s just a reflection of the fact that the script has tricked you into getting too comfortable with your pre-decisions about your lines. I have the utmost faith that you can break your vocal patterns and express yourself authentically, because every human does it everyday. So here are your instructions:

To start, just try to become aware and listen to your patterns (recording yourself is a great trick). After all, we can’t change a habit until we can recognize ourselves doing it (this is the awareness part of the unconscious competence model that I talked about recently!)

Once you can hear yourself in patterns, practice and play around with letting every thought have its own energy instead. Play with this enough and huzzah! Goodbye actor voice.😊

Comment below and let me know how it goes! Or extra bonus points… you’re totally welcome to share an audio or video recording with me on the Voice Body Connection facebook page and I’ll give you tips!