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Think you can make someone go out and order a juicy burger at the mere suggestion of your voice? Maybe you\u2019ve thought about who\u2019s behind the \u201cunexpected item in the bagging area\u201d message at the automated checkout at the supermarket? Love the idea of a tenor so commanding that you could convince someone to buy, well, just about anything?<\/p>\n
Having a voice that sizzles and drips, growls and grumbles or brightly coerces is one thing, but making a go of being a voice-over artist can be as challenging as getting a job in any sector of the performing arts. And to top it off, it\u2019s a fast-paced hustle in an industry increasingly threatened by AI<\/a>.<\/p>\n It can be a lonely existence for people used to routine and water-cooler chat, but wonderful for people with high freedom needs and a low tolerance for boredom. You could be reading an audiobook in the morning and advertising massage products in the afternoon.<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019re driving from one studio to another and your only interaction is with the client or the agency. But it\u2019s mainly the engineer,\u201d says voice actor\/artist Aimee Horne, a current promo voice on SBS On Demand. \u201cYou\u2019re there for an hour and then that\u2019s it. Off you go, back into the wild.\u201d<\/p>\n Related Article Because of the nature of the industry, where the voice-over is the very last piece of the production, actors and artists will have little to no preparation time and might record from their homes. Jobs flow in hour to hour, and a flexible calendar with the ability to swing from one job to the next is a prerequisite.<\/p>\n \u201cPart of the job is sight-reading, \u201d says voice actor and artist Nikos Andronicos. (He\u2019s the current safety voice of Sydney Ferries. If you hear someone cheerily suggest you pop on a life jacket in case of emergency, that\u2019ll be him.) \u201cIt\u2019s like being a session musician. If you\u2019re doing a long-form thing, like an audiobook, they give you the book ahead of time. But personally, I like living the book as I\u2019m reading it,\u201d he says. \u201cI think your performance is better, because you\u2019re not preempting. So everything is just in Much like any freelance work, it comes in sporadically \u2013 drought for weeks, monsoon for months. \u201cYou\u2019ll have good years, and you\u2019ll have bad years, and you sort of have to take it with a grain of salt,\u201d says Horne. \u201cSometimes it\u2019ll be amazing, and you feel vital and that\u2019s a lovely feeling to have. Then it gets balanced out pretty quickly with feeling like you\u2019ll never work again,\u201d she says. \u201cIt took a long time for me to get comfortable with that.\u201d<\/p>\n There\u2019s a difference between voice-over artists and voice-over actors, too. Think of an artist as the voice you might hear on a movie promo or an acne wash commercial. An actor might do the voices in an animation, audiobook or video game. Many voice-over professionals will take on both styles of work.<\/p>\n Actors and artists are booked for the certain qualities their voices have. Andronicos, for instance, has a brightness and pace to his \u2013 a certain quality that takes the listener along for the ride. Among other things, he writes and directs his own animation series and has worked in the voice-over industry most of his life. Some readers may even remember one of his ads from the \u201990s \u2013 he was the kid\u2019s voice from the 1994 campaign for bananas, Make Those Bodies Sing.<\/p>\n Aimee Horne has a voice that\u2019s all at once vivacious, energetic, commanding and wry. She has a series of voice-acting credits to her name (she voices Cotton-Tail in the 2021 animated feature, Peter Rabbit 2: The Runaway<\/a>), as well as a full roster of voice artistry. For her, it was a gradual transition from stage and screen acting. After graduating from NIDA, she started with an agent who also had a voice-over (VO) department. \u201cThat gave me an idea of what the VO world was about,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was so exciting,\u201d says Horne. \u201cI really loved the speed of it, the variation of what you were going into. And the relative anonymity of the job as well. So, you were a mystery and it was a mystery. The more that I did the work, I realised I preferred it.\u201d<\/p>\n Robbie McGregor is considered a living legend in the field, with a deep, rich, commanding throttle and a sort of mirth behind every sentence. An actor who has worked on the Aussie screen since the early \u201970s, Baz Luhrmann once called him \u201cthe voice Australia trusts\u201d. His first voice-over job was for Mercedes-Benz. At the time, he was reluctant to do it \u2013 back in the \u203270s and \u201980s, serious actors didn\u2019t do ads \u2013 but a pile of unpaid bills pushed him over the line.<\/p>\n Since then, he\u2019s become something of a cult celebrity for his work as narrator for SBS from 1989 to 2006 (hearing \u201cSBS advises the following program has been classified M. It contains violence, sexual references, adult themes and nudity\u201d always heralded something salacious, if you were watching during McGregor\u2019s tenure) and a two-decade voice gig as \u201cKing Wally Otto in the Soundproof Booth\u201d with Roy and HG on This Sporting Life<\/a>, which ran from 1986 to 2008. He also voiced the countdown for the Triple J Hottest 100 until this year.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I was with SBS, I would get into a cab and I would only have to say three words and the cab driver would go, \u2018You\u2019re the SBS guy!\u2019 It was just amazing,\u201d says McGregor. \u201cYou know, it was a very multicultural station. And very multicultural drivers in Sydney town as well. And then, the number of times I\u2019d be at a party and people would be like, \u2018Oh, go on, go on. Just say it, just say nudity.\u2019 And you\u2019d think, \u2018Oh, god, how much innuendo do I have to come out with?\u2019\u2006\u201d<\/p>\n The threat of generative AI dangles over the heads of a lot of people working in creative industries, but it\u2019s particularly critical for voice-over artists working on what might be considered to be lower-end promos. For some professional voice actors who rely on that work to pay the bills, it may cut their income drastically.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Simon Kennedy, president of The Australian Association of Voice Actors (AAVA), says the risks include \u201ca lack of authenticity and trust when the voice delivering your information isn\u2019t human\u201d.<\/p>\n There are benefits to AI for businesses, when it comes to large-scale jobs with a next-to-instant turnaround such as visual descriptions. An AI program is able to quickly and cheaply describe what might be happening on screen down to costuming, props and lighting.<\/p>\n \u201cBut it is important to know when it is appropriate to use it and when it isn\u2019t,\u201d says Kennedy. \u201cRight now we are in a phase of blind adoption, with no consideration for whether or not this technology is improving our lives or causing harm. In the case of voice actors or voice-over artists, our voices are potentially used to create a system that competes with us, with zero permission or compensation.\u201d<\/p>\n The legalities are pretty vague right now, according to Kennedy, who says the AAVA is pushing for laws to protect people\u2019s voice, image and likeness along with mandating the labelling of AI-generated content. \u201cEveryone deserves to know when the content they are consuming is not human.\u201d<\/p>\n So, it\u2019s an industry that\u2019s both threatened and far from easy to break into. Agencies such as RMK Management \u2013 leaders in the field of voice-over Just like any industry, there are trends in the voice-over world, too. The most significant in the past decade is a shift from the traditional, pushy\/shouty hard sell of \u201cbut that\u2019s not all! And you\u2019ll get a free set of steak knives!\u201d to a more inclusive, laid-back, conversational vibe. And that\u2019s thanks to actor-turned-postie Samuel Johnson<\/a> (his big break was in the early-noughties TV hit The Secret Life of Us). \u201cSam would do this kind of stripped-back, relaxed-style read,\u201d says Downs. \u201cAll the voices that we already managed had to adapt to be able to do [it too]. And then, because everyone\u2019s doing that natural style, in order to get the cut-through, you need to add some more energy. And then we ended up, sort of, at this kind of hybrid. It\u2019s quite interesting to see how it all evolves.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/b89bd6e4bb60ed45e528f2c87dcda3ec9ccdb065100e65a5d7d4b4a0bb2d7199.gif\")
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the moment.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"Voice](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/84f2958b25f839503ec370ddb01ce86a44a8733e.jpeg\")
Voice actor Nikos Andronicos says the job is \u201clike being a session musician\u201d.Wolter Peeters<\/p>\n![\"\u201cI](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/9724723ecdeb3042562bd5c45f490d22efa3ca09.jpeg\")
\u201cI would only have to say three words and the cab driver would go, \u2018You\u2019re the SBS guy!\u2019\u201d says Robbie McGregor. \u201cIt was just amazing.\u201d <\/p>\n
representation \u2013 aren\u2019t taking on clients unless they bring some serious business along with them. \u201cWe\u2019re not generally on the lookout for new artists,\u201d says managing director Luke Downs. \u201cWe\u2019re lucky to be at the top end of the market in voice representation. So usually we have people coming to us who are already established.\u201d<\/p>\n
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