Today we’d like to introduce you to Alex Silva.
Alex, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
In my teens, I started modeling and doing commercials. I did a few independent films but mainly worked in commercials. At one point I even produced commercials for a television station. The commercial work naturally lead me to getting voice over work and I eventually started doing spots for radio too. Over the years I have met different clients either through word of mouth, networking or through agents.
Great, 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?
Some years the road has been smooth and others have been like running over a pothole. I think anyone who does creative work, freelance or is in the entertainment industry goes through ups and downs. I even stepped away from vo for a while. I have chronic bronchitis and I used to get sick all the time. Constantly getting sore throats was a nightmare. I have finally taken control of it with natural products. There were many years I was recording in a closet or a makeshift booth. It wasn’t easy. Sometimes I would wait until the middle of the night to record because of noisy neighbors. Now I record in a WhisperRoom. I’m very grateful for my booth.
We’d love to hear more about your work.
I have done a little bit of everything, commercials, telephony, and animation. Right now I’m booking more training/tutorial projects, which I never used to book. The tone of my voice used to be more on the sultry side and I have been asked many times to do voiceovers for adult content because of that. Right now I’m working on a personal project, which is a series of guided meditations. I meditate every day so I thought why not do my own? It’s interesting but as critical as I am of the work I do for clients, I’m even more critical of my own project. I’m constantly updating and changing the scripts. I’ll be proud once it’s all done.
Do you look back particularly fondly on any memories from childhood?
One of my favorite memories is putting on plays and forcing my mother to watch and trying to do stunts in our backyard. I have a scar over my left eyebrow because I was trying to fly my bike over a makeshift hill using pieces of wood, bricks and rocks. I lost control, flew off my bike and landed on a nail that was sticking out of the side of our house. I still remember being rushed to the hospital and the doctor telling my mother that the nail barely missed my eye. I was always jumping off something. We used to live in a house that was built in the 1940’s and the bathroom had one of those standing floor heaters. I was about 5 years old and I was in the bathtub when I decided I was going to fly off the edge of the tub with a towel wrapped around my neck. I slipped and fell on top of the heater, landing on my chest and stomach. As my flesh was burning my poor mom comes running in horrified as I’m screaming at the top of my lungs. Once again I’m rushed to the hospital. I had to have the bandages changed everyday for weeks. I hated it. My sister was in the bathtub with me and still can’t talk about it to this day. She was traumatized. So the end of that story is not a good one but I have fond memories of jumping out of trees or off the roof of our house pretending I could fly like Batman. That’s probably why I have back problems now. My other favorite memory is my mom buying me a telescope when I was 9. I was always fascinated with the universe and I would sit in our front yard every night with my little telescope looking at the stars and the moon. I love visiting the Griffith Observatory. I was awestruck the first time I saw the rings of Saturn through a telescope. To this day I’m still fascinated and I often place stars in a lot of my photos.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.alexsvoiceover.com
- Instagram: @aworldnamedalex
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