“Nowadays, you can be unbelievable and you still won’t get a job in an animated cartoon, ’cause you have to be a celebrity now,” Billy West, a voice-over artist, told FOX News. As celebrities bask in the limelight, professional voice actors are being left out in the cartoon cold. The star appeal of celebrity voices is simply selling tickets at a rate that other voice actors can’t compete with.
This is the same complaints when reality TV became the big thing and suddenly the actors unions went crazy. Now you’ll notice that most contestants on reality TV shows just happen to be models or fitness trainers and live in California. They’re all actors.
Yes, it sucks that the current trend is celebrities doing voiceovers but I really don’t believe that with the advent of computer games and an ever growing reach of digital media there isn’t more work to be had in more places. But I’m not a v/o guy so I don’t know the stats.
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