Today we’d like to introduce you to Ed Cunningham
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
Well I’m from Bethesda, MD originally– went to college at Davidson in North Carolina– then immediately after graduating entered the MFA Acting program at Northern Illinois Univertsity, where I studied the Meisner technique from a bunch of incredible Neighborhood Playhouse teachers who had just moved there from New York. We actually gave Sanford Meisner his honorary doctorate in 1995, and I was even his assistant for the week while he was in town teaching us and accepting his award. Such a great time in my life- I taught acting to undergraduates while I was there, and this was when I first discovered my natural inclination for teaching. It helped me fall head over heels in love with the craft of acting– way out in the corn fields of Illinois! Then, I jumped into Chicago theatre right after that. I was enamored with Steppenwolf Theatre and all of those actors, and I wanted to be on stage with them. I spent eight years trying to accomplish that goal– got close once– but it didn’t happen.
Still, I worked at some pretty great theaters– played Orpheus and Ceyx in the original production of Metamorphoses at Lookingglass Theatre, and played Marc Antony in Julius Caesar for Chicago Shakespeare. I performed in 40+ plays during those eight years, one right after the other. Then one day a voiceover agent’s assistant named Debby Kotzen, from what was then CED Talent Agency in Chicago, approached me after seeing a play I was in at The Raven Theatre. She said, “You have a good voice. You should come downtown and audition for us tomorrow morning at 9– there’s something you might be right for.” Well I went out with the cast that night…(gulp)…but somehow managed to make it to my meeting with CED at 9am, and the voiceover audition was for Gatorade. All I had to say with my scratchy, slightly hungover voice was “Gatorade…is it in you?” Easy enough, right? Well, I booked it!!! And that truly was a miracle. Nobody books their very first audition in voiceover, let alone one for a national television commercial that, back then, made you tens of thousands of dollars in residuals. I was gobsmacked. And quickly understood that voiceover was not something I should pooh pooh. It sure beat catering, which was my “real world job” at the time. Of course, I signed with CED Talent in Chicago, which eventually became NV Talent, and that agent assistant, Debby Kotzen, is now the owner operator– she represents me in Chicago to this day. I went on to do many plays and films and TV shows while acting in Chicago, but voiceover often paid the bills, and I’m so grateful to Debby for giving me that initial opportunity.
But all the while, I still desperately wanted to act in films. Movies were the love of my life to that point, and I was auditioning for everything I could. I also wrote screenplays with my fellow actors while in Chicago, and one of them eventually got the attention of Daniel J. Travanti, of Hill Street Blues fame. If you’re not from the 1900s, Hill Street Blues was NBC’s Emmy winning cop drama during the 1980s, and Daniel was amazing in it. He helped us raise the money to produce one of these scripts, called “Design” and we shot it in 2000, in Chicago with all Chicago actors and crew. Cutting right to the chase, we got the film into Sundance a couple years later! Robert Redford himself told us he loved our film, which was shocking considering it was a dark comedy and kinda racey. Not exactly what you’d imagine Mr. Redford enjoying! But there you have it. One of my acting idols had watched me in a feature length movie, and liked it! Of course, I felt the need to move to Los Angeles in 2001, in order to chase my dream of acting in the movies.
After moving to Los Angeles, reality set in. Big time. I couldn’t book anything on-camera, and my agent dropped me after 3 months, since he was only doing a favor for my Chicago agent anyway. But I managed to get onto some Los Angeles stages– played Petruccio in Taming of the Shrew for Zoo District Theatre and John McDermott in Ourselves Alone for Lost Angels Theatre. I also wrote and staged my own play, called JOE, at the Tre Stage above Mashti Malone’s on La Brea. It was fascinating to see how theatre worked in Los Angeles, and while figuring it out, I did manage to sign with a voiceover agent named Steve Tisherman– he was Don LaFontaine’s agent at the time, and I couldn’t believe it when I’d be sitting in the waiting room with the “IN A WORLD…” movie trailer guy! Don was a legend, and helped further my belief that one could indeed make a living just doing voiceover.
Eventually, that became my primary goal. And every year I’d book a job that would introduce me to a new kind of voiceover. I became the narrator of a Discovery Channel show called “Surgery Saved My Life” and discovered the world of Broadcast Narration. That lead to my narrating the show Bait Car for TruTV for eight years. Then I started doing video game voiceovers and played roles in the first two Call of Duty games, as well as the lead in Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon, and the role of Mitsurugi in the popular Namco game Soul Caliber. Los Angeles never ceases to amaze me– so much opportunity that you didn’t even know existed until you book something by accident in that particular sub-industry! I started looping for film and TV, and doing celebrity sound-alikes (I’ve done ADR, or additional dialogue recording, for Sylvester Stallone, Dylan McDermott, and Taron Egerton.) I discovered doing voiceovers for tv promos– booking jobs for Disney Channel and the WB. And all the while, I was still doing well in commercial voiceover, booking national tv spots for Subaru, Office Depot, Michelob Ultra, and dozens more.
So yes, I had lots of work through my 20s and early 30s, but I didn’t blow the roof off or anything, and after getting married in 2006 to a castmate from my Chicago theatre days, Anastasia Basil, I knew I had to set up some new streams of income if I was going to start a family. In 2007, I began producing voiceover demos for actors– first as favors to friends– but then I got pretty good at it, and my students (as I came to think of them) started booking huge jobs! For instance, William Salyers’ animation demo led to him playing Rigby in The Regular Show, which won Emmys! It was immensely gratifying to watch clients grow their careers after working with me on their very first voiceover demo.
And so that continues to this day. I’m doing voiceover– currently for Oakley Sunglasses, SubZero WOLF appliances, Walden University, and I’m a recurring character in the Fire Emblem video game franchise. I’m still producing voiceover demos for actors as well. This year, I produced a commercial voiceover demo and a video game voiceover demo for a young actor fresh out of Illinois State University, Eli Morris, and within weeks he signed with the voiceover agency ACM here in Los Angeles, and booked a national AFLAC commercial voiceover in his first week of auditioning. In addition to producing voiceover demos and coaching voiceover actors, I intend to become a full-fledged professor of voiceover, if you can believe that. I’m teaching Voice Acting at Elon University this summer, and I adjunct at the University of Colorado Boulder, USC, Loyola Marymount, and other schools, all with the hope of eventually settling into a full time Professor of Voice or Professor of Acting with a university BFA/MFA acting program. Voiceover really became my acting teacher over the years, and I enjoy showing actors how it could benefit them, both artistically and financially. Anastasia and I managed to raise two daughters in Los Angeles, in part thanks to voiceover– and in fact they’re doing voiceover now as well! My youngest, Willa, did a guest star on We Bare Bears, and my eldest daughter, Emerson is currently in the #1 movie in America, Inside Out 2! She plays Ally, one of the girls Riley befriends in her first year of high school.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
I’ve alluded to some of them already. I think it’s safe to say that no actor’s journey is a smooth one. It’s a tough way to try and make a living, no matter who you are. But all of the failures, all of the auditions where you hit the wall, all of the moments when you COULDN’T cry on cue, and all of the big roles you lost out on– those moments become your greatest teachers. I remember auditioning for David Cronenberg’s casting director, specifically for A History of Violence, and man did I love Cronenberg’s movies so so much. I REALLY wanted that part, and really wanted to play a tough guy alongside two of my idols William Hurt and Viggo Mortenson. The CD was a lovely woman who really liked what I was doing, but she kept trying to get me to “do less” with my face and my body. She wanted stillness from me– she wanted it all in my eyes– and damn I thought I’d gotten there. But no dice. I didn’t book it. You go back to those moments in your mind, over and over again, trying to change the end of the story. You’ll think of different strategies, different preparations, different artistic choices that you could have made, but the only place you will ever get to deploy those ideas is in the next opportunity that comes along. So, the good news is, growth is almost inevitable if you keep at it. Of course I have a million other stories of failure, and I’m proud of them. The more spectacular the better! Humiliation becomes a great story when you’re out with friends. And getting dropped by an agent somehow opens the door to the next agent who knows a whole different set of people that you’ll be introduced to. It’s never about the failure itself. It’s about how you respond to it.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I love voice. The human voice. Animal’s voices too! I think I always went to a character’s voice first when I was just doing theatre. How is it different from my own? How do I use my voice to get far away from myself, so that I can truthfully be this other person and not ever hear myself while playing the character. My love of voice led me to study Catherine Fitzmaurice’s Voicework for the past year, and it’s also gotten me hooked on guitar. During the pandemic, in my late forties, I picked up an acoustic guitar for the first time in my life, and I have been playing every day since. Now I write songs, and modulate my voice in ways I never thought possible. It has helped my acting and story telling tremendously, and helps me warm up on days when I have a lot of narration to record. This past summer, I finally got up the nerve to do my first audiobook– I narrate The Ends of War, by Caroline Janney, a civil war non-fiction book about the days surrounding the signing of the surrender at Appomattox. I loved jumping in and out of so many different voices, and getting to record my version of such iconic figure’s voices, like Lincoln, Grant, Lee, etc. Trying new things is now more important to me than ever. Funny, I just realized you asked me what I’m known for, but I responded with only the things I wish I were known for! I’m known for VO, for voicing many characters and commercials over the years, but also for teaching VO and for helping actors start their careers, and not charging too much in the process. There are some demo producers out there that don’t go the extra mile with actors, that charge too much and make demos that… well… just sound like demos. They need to sound like actual spots and actual film/tv/video game characters! They should play into the individual actor’s strengths, showcasing them in the most effective way possible. And in the process of making the demo, the producer needs to get the actor started down the right road business-wise. I try really hard to set myself apart from demo producers that function like factories. I produce proven-to-work voiceover demos based on the advice of dozens of current VO agents, and I remain an informational resource for all of my clients for years to come.
The crisis has affected us all in different ways. How has it affected you and any important lessons or epiphanies you can share with us?
Yes, don’t be idle. Pursue your passion projects when all else fails. Try new things, and don’t ever stop taking classes in whatever areas your heart wishes to reside. And above all else, get outside! Take advantage of all the natural beauty surrounding us in Los Angeles. I hike anywhere and everywhere I can in this city because it’s therapeutic. It helps clear your mind and begin anew. And it’ll keep your ticker tickin’ for more years, they say. Favorite hikes include Trail Canyon to the waterfall, The Musch Trail to Eagle Rock in Topanga State Park, and the hike to the old M.A.S.H. set in Malibu Creek State Park.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.edcunningham.net
- Instagram: @EdCunninghamVO
