Today we’d like to introduce you to Shelby Young.
Shelby, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
It’s funny, when I was teeny tiny and living in Florida, my mom saw an article in the paper about a local pageant so she signed me up for fun, thinking it was a one-off thing. I ended up winning that pageant and having to move on to the next pageant and so on, and so on. After a few rounds of this, it was clear the pageant world wasn’t for us, but some of the judges were youth commercial and modeling agents who wanted to sign me onto their roster. We waited a bit, but when I was around five or so, I signed on and started working pretty regularly in the modeling and commercial world of Miami.
Not a lot of TV shows or films shoot in Florida, but by chance an episode of a Showtime series was filming there and I auditioned, booked the part, and realized I loved that world even more than what I was doing currently. So, my mom and I packed it up for New York where I was working on theater productions and independent films. While in NY, I ended up getting to travel for work for the first time. When I was 10, I was flown to Iceland to film the pilot (or test episode) of a new kids show called Lazytown and after that happened, my agents in New York urged us to move to LA because this is really the main hub of the entertainment industry. We finally made the move when I was 13 and I haven’t left since. I love it here! I started working on tons of different films and television series and I feel like this was always meant to be my home.
Then, in 2012, I auditioned for a video game called Dead Rising 3 — they were looking for on-camera actors to perform motion capture as well as voice work for the role. I was so excited when I booked the lead role of Annie and that experience really opened my eyes to the world of VO.
So, for the past few years, I’ve been hitting the voice over world head-on. I put myself in as many classes and workshops as I could afford. I worked on a demo, signed with an amazing agency and have been so lucky to have been working on incredibly fun games, animated projects, commercials, radio, podcasts– you name it. I’m truly in love with being behind the mic in a booth or suited up on a MoCap stage!
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?
Being an actor in a city of actors is never easy. There’s always that dream project that juuuuust slips away, and you stay up late going over-and-over the auditioning process in your mind– wondering what you could have done “better”, how you could have said this line differently, should you have worn a different outfit… The saying comparisons will kill you is true. A big struggle is learning to not compare your journey to anyone else’s. It took years of heartache over losing projects, or even booking a project but the funding falls through, etc., for me to realize that it truly is never personal. It can feel like a punch in the gut when a project doesn’t go your way, but you need to realize that it just wasn’t *your* project. And your next booking is waiting for you when it’s *your* time. Focusing on being the best you, you can be instead of trying to be like anyone else, is a hard thing to do but, in my opinion, the healthiest thing you CAN do for yourself in this industry.
We’d love to hear more about your work and what you are currently focused on. What else should we know?
I am an actor– a voice over, mocap and on-camera actor. And I love every facet of it!
For on-camera work, the roles I’m probably most known for are the recurring role of Leah on American Horror Story, KC in David Fincher’s The Social Network, Kinsey on Days of our Lives and Ruby in Wild Child which I played opposite Emma Roberts. I’m also known for being a bit of a scream-queen, I starred in multiple horror movies back to back including Nightlight (written and directed by the writers of A Quiet Place), The Midnight Game, A Haunting in Cawdor alongside Cary Elwes and a few others.
As far as my voice-over career, I’m incredibly lucky to voice Princess Leia (and Princess Kneesaa the Ewok!) on Disney Channel’s Star Wars Forces of Destiny. I also just had a game come out with another VoyageLA interviewee, Valerie Rose Lohman– we met on set in Uppsala, Sweden last year when we were cast to play the lead roles of the Blazkowicz twins in the new game Wolfenstein: Youngblood. That was an amazing experience, and being one of the first female playable characters in such a long-standing and beloved franchise is not lost on me, I’m really honored they trusted me with the part. Other VO works of mine include voicing multiple Batuuan residents at Disneyland/Disney World’s Star Wars Galaxy’s Edge, various characters in The Lego Movie 2, Uglydolls, The Boss Baby as well as the roles of Minnie Smith in Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus, Becca in Battlefield 1, the Queen of Karts in Running Rich Racing and more!
I’ve also found myself in a really interesting pocket of the VO world — ADR & looping. There are a few different things I do within this world and celebrity voice-matching is one of them. Basically, if an actor is unavailable to come back in to re-record a few lines of dialogue that maybe weren’t caught clearly enough on set, I’ll step in and perform their lines for them. You have to sound indistinguishable from the person you are matching, which is a specific skill set that I didn’t even realize I had until I had my first voice-match audition. Not only do you need to sound like them, but you need to match the timing and movement of their mouth. It can be quite challenging at times, but I love it! I’ve matched for ten actresses so far and have enjoyed getting to step into their minds (and mouths) for those sessions! Then as far as looping, I’ll come in with a group of three to 20 other “loopers” and we breathe life into the background of film & tv shows. When you’re on set and you’re filming your lead actors in, let’s say, a mall — the background actors aren’t able to speak or it would affect the audio quality of the lead’s dialogue but the final product would seem so weird if everything but the actors was completely silent. So background actor’s will mime conversations on set, and then it’s our job as loopers to give them voices in post-production. So, once again, there’s a timing aspect, as well as now, an improv aspect. We’ll usually make up conversations with each other as we go along which makes these acted out scenarios sound (hopefully!) as natural as a genuine conversation would.
Do you look back particularly fondly on any memories from childhood?
I’m very lucky to have had a really happy childhood filled with lots of incredible memories, but I think my favorite would have to be playing pretend with my grandpa. We’d run around the house and I’d yell out which Disney character I was (usually Ariel… sometimes Tarzan) and tell him who he had to be (most often Prince Eric but I remember The Beast was a favorite too). They had this great canopy bed with iron bars that I would swing around on and my grandpa always kept up with me. That’s a memory that will always make me smile.
Contact Info:
- Website: http://shelby-young.com
- Instagram: http://instagram.com/shelbyhyoung
- Facebook: http://facebook.com/shelbyheatheryoung
- Twitter: http://twitter.com/shelby_young
- Twitch: http://twitch.tv/shelbyhyoung
- Other: http://imdb.me/shelbyyoung
Image Credit:
Corey C. Waters, Christina Scherer
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