Today we’d like to introduce you to Gabrielle Salinger.
Hi Gabrielle, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
My first professional acting job was when I was about seven years old. I was in a production of Cinderella, and after what felt like a pretty rigorous audition process for a little kid, I was cast as one of the mice. I was thrilled. The part, as written, had no lines, but I had an idea and pitched it to the director; to this day, I can’t believe they let me say this, but night after night, as Cinderella was getting ready for her ball, in front of packed houses I’d say, “Try a cheddar cheese cocktail, it puts a wiiiggggle in your tail!” It got a laugh every time, and I knew right then that was the feeling I wanted to keep chasing.
Growing up in Boston, I was always involved in acting programs, school plays, and local theatre. I worked as a company member with the Boston Center for the Arts and attended Stagedoor Manor (a performing arts summer camp in the Catskills.) I moved to Los Angeles right after high school to attend the American Academy of Dramatic Arts before going on to study at several wonderful studios, including The Baron Brown Studio, Berg Studios, and most recently, The Last Acting Studio with the incredible Desean Terry, where I now teach as a scene study instructor. I also work privately as a dialect coach- assisting actors with dialect training for roles and auditions and even helped develop a vocal performance for a co-star in a recent project. We needed to disguise her natural vocal quality and create a character voice that would be interesting to listen to but still grounded within the role. It was a pretty fun and fascinating process, and I’m so proud of what we came up with!
I’ve been really lucky recently to be able to play a pretty fun and diverse string of roles ranging from broader comedy to hyper-intense supernatural-style drama, and it’s always so fun to inhabit these different characters, to live different lives and play within these wildly different genres. Even with the intense trials and tribulations that come along with working in this industry, I always feel so lucky to be on set and am so grateful that I get to do this as my job.
We all face challenges, but looking back, would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
I don’t think anyone who’s ever worked within the entertainment industry in any capacity would describe it as a “smooth road”, and certainly not as an actor haha. You really need to develop a “thick skin” to deal with all the rejection and the complexities of the business side while simultaneously being hypersensitive and emotionally connected for your art, it’s a strange dichotomy and a tough line to walk. I think I’ve dealt with a lot of the struggles that are standard for our industry: Not getting a part I really wanted, going through 5 or 6 rigorous auditions and callbacks only to lose out on the booking for something like my height being off by an inch, or being told I was their first pick for the role, but they’re giving it to the actor with more tv credits. I’ve been lured into false auditions and photoshoots by men who just want to hurt or take advantage of you. I’ve booked the dream role and had the project fall through before we ever get to shoot, I’ve shot great parts and work that I felt really proud of only to find out, after the fact, that the project was scrapped, and the project will never be released. There’s a multitude of challenges that come along with this job, and all you can do is shrug it off, pick yourself back up, and keep going.
A recent project, however, had me dealing with a personal struggle more intense than I ever could have imagined. Around the beginning of quarantine, my mom was diagnosed with a neurodegenerative disorder called Multiple Systems Atrophy or MSA. I’d never heard of it before and was in no way prepared for the quickness or severity with which it would take effect. It was devastating to witness and even more devastating to not be able to help her. In 2022, she caught Covid, and it became clear pretty quickly that she wouldn’t be able to recover. I flew home to Boston for several months to be with her with a deadline looming to start filming on this project in July. For whatever reason, I guess as a coping mechanism, I felt compelled to keep working. I was doing things I can’t even fathom now looking back, all while shooting self-tapes for my agency, recording voice-over projects, and hopping on Zoom to do dialect coachings. She passed away on July 15th, 2022, only a few days before filming started on this movie. I flew from Boston to LA for a rehearsal, flew back again that night for her funeral, and then back to LA only a couple days later to begin production. I tried my best to just do my job and be professional on set. I’m still not sure how I accomplished what I did; it still feels like a strange nightmare and not something that could’ve really happened. It was only a few months after wrapping production, and still very early in my grieving that I started teaching at my studio. It’s definitely been and continues to be a very challenging journey, but I love what I do; I’m proud of the work I’ve done and am grateful to have something I’m passionate about and work that I can lose myself in. I think grief can erase who you were before; it’s something that can leave you searching for a new identity, and it is doubly strange to be working in a discipline that has you constantly assuming new identities, but there’s also something therapeutic in it. There’s a nice escape in allowing yourself to live as different people when you’re not totally sure who you are as yourself anymore.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I’ve always loved doing dialects and different voices ever since I was little. I remember watching Audrey Hepburn in “My Fair Lady” and obsessively copying her cockney accent. Pretending to be British in general was actually a very large part of my childhood. A few years ago, I was fortunate enough to be cast in the role of Cathy, a brash and brazen Irish woman, in a radio play starring John Cena, Anna Chlumsky, and a lot of my favorite actors from SNL. When I went into the booth to record, they were surprised to hear me speak in my natural voice and told me they’d been excited to cast a real Irish person, I very much am not, but took it as an incredible compliment! That’s one of the things I love most about working in voice-over, that opportunity to use so many different dialects and character voices and play roles that you could never have a chance to be cast as in traditional performance; some of my favorites have been getting to play an undead Mayan princess, a student at Hogwarts, a French bear cub, a sexy anthropomorphized cell phone and a tiger purse pet. I think that’s another reason I enjoy dialect coaching so much- I love finding characters through voice and am fascinated by the transformative changes that can be affected simply by changing the way we speak.
Pricing:
- $100/ hr dialect coaching or accent reduction session
- $300 for a four-session dialect coaching or accent reduction package
Contact Info:
- Website: gabriellesalinger.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gabrielle.salinger/
Image Credits
Paul Smith
Peter Verduin
Kaylan Clark Libby
Elizabeth Parker
Deidhra Fahey
