We were lucky to catch up with Antonio Greco recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Antonio, thanks for joining us today. Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.

When I first started voice acting, I hadn’t a clue about any of it, like most people. There is no school for formal training when it comes to acting specifically with just your voice. It’s really trial and error. The scientific method (f*** around and find out). I tried a little bit of everything; pay to play websites where you pay annually to receive auditions, Fiverr as a freelancer, cold contacting local production houses and videographers to see who maintained a roster, the whole nine yards. Truthfully, I think this ultimately was the best approach for me. I learned what I wanted and what I didn’t want. What I liked and what I couldn’t stand *ahem* audiobooks.

But that’s a different process for everyone. They call voice acting an industry of industries, and everyone has a different path into it. No two people have the same story. But we ALL do have a story and therein lies the rub. Community. In voice acting circles, building a community and finding your niches and the people who operate within them is a great path to success. Not everyone can be great at everything, but you find the things you are strongest at and attack those fronts first. Then, once you’re more established, you f*** around and find out some more in new paths. It’s a creative career when all is said and done. If you can’t allow yourself to have fun and enjoy the process (ups, downs and all), you should re-evaluate your goals.

I’m in my 6th, going on 7th year as a full time voice actor and at this point in my career, what drives me for my work is a concept called Wu Wei. It translates roughly into “No Force”. Acting, I’ve come to realize, is not pretending to behave a certain way or portray a mindset. It’s not even pretending. The best acting is sincere, authentic and raw. It’s just you. Wu Wei. No force. That which is of a particular nature simply is. It does not force. So if for a character I am someone who is hiding their fear from someone I don’t want to look down on me for instance, I look to my own real life experiences that are approximate enough and then live in how those moments felt, channeling it into my performance.

Really at the end of the day, it’s almost therapeutic, just working through my traumas and inner most emotions via this cathartic release of my acting.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I went to college for film and media at Temple University in my hometown of Philly. Once I graduated, I looked for opportunities in film and TV and found myself at the city of Philadelphia’s government TV channel. It was awful ahahaha. Managment issues and gross misuse of time and resources aside, it was still just another 9 to 5 office job. It was soul crushing and irrefutably boring. As someone who was diagnosed with severe ADHD only as an adult (post this city job), that kind of stagnation and cold, grey “stability” just wasn’t for me. I wanted more and I always loved voice acting. I have a buddy I worked on many films with back in college and still on the side after graduation and he put me in contact with a local VO agent. She mentored me but no longer represented clients. She gave me some of my first opportunities including a children’s book series about an alien space bird who traveled the world sampling new cultures. It was fun but I still shudder when even thinking about those early days. It’s fascinating to see how far I have come since then!

From that point forward I set a plan in place to get away from that 9 to 5 grind and I started spending my weekends working on auditions, building up my personal website and gathering contacts of companies and people I could cold call or email looking for opportunities. I landed one very long and tedious job but it was very well paying overall. After that, I decided that the following year, I would leave the city job and work for myself.

From there I found a community of voice actors local to my area led by Jamie Muffet, a leader in the industry who has not only voiced everything from commercials to video games to documentaries but also is extremely active in the community when it comes to making connections and bringing opportunities to VAs of all levels. They became my base and my springboard into more. To this day I maintain strong friendships with all of them, despite many of us moving or having life changes that makes it harder to keep in touch with any consistency.

I was very motivated to make the life I wanted for myself and I wanted to do something I loved. The funny thing is, many get into their dream careers with bright eyed enthusiasm and often find it’s not always what they expected. I was the opposite. I went in with an idea of what it would be and as I have worked and grown I find there is way more to it that is relevant to my personal life than I ever considered. My own personal journey of growth and healing as a person has opened up my talents and skills, but also my whole career path. It is something I do for money, yes. And I’m damn good at what I do. But it is also a dream coming true and so I owe it to myself to do the hardest thing, day in and day out: allow myself to E N J O Y it.

I have five agents currently and I am spoiled for choice when it comes to audition opportunities. I work primarily in commercials and video games, though I am currently expanding into more animation work. The commercials put bread on the table but also allow for openness and creative interpretation. The video games are just where I go ham and have fun with it all. I’ve even trained in performance capture for video games. You know, where you wear the tight suit with the ping pong balls on them and they capture your vocal performace AND your movements to bring a character to life. There is always more to learn, more to do and more ways to refine and hone what you are strongest at while fortifying the places you need work still.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

This is extremely relevant to my current state of mind. I am finding that the measure of success and the goals I wanted to reach in this career may have been informed by things I was lacking and looking to fulfill in other aspects of my life. For instance, I always imagined being one of the biggest VAs in animation, but I believe that came from wanting recognition for my work. To be seen. To be understood. Like any true artist. But I have come to realize that I have those things already. I see me. I understand me. And I create, above all, for myself and what makes me feel happy and inspired. That’s primary. The secondary drive is money. I realize I speak from a place of privilege having already made it to a stable point when some may never get there, but I have found that the harder you try to grip onto something, the easier it slips your grasp. Once you are able to TRULY let something go…it finds its way right to you. It’s the worry and the fear of what may happen if you don’t grip on hard enough that stands directly in the path of getting it. Because “it” is really within you. Your connection to your creativity and your confidence within yourself to know that a bad day or a bad week or even a bad year of art doesn’t mean that’s all there is within you or all you will ever have. Believe in yourself first, then get to work.

What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?

For one thing, we can actually treat art as the important base for our entire society that it is. From the moment we can crawl we are curious and create. Babies playing with blocks, children making art, graffiti on walls, doodles in your notebook, even expressing our emotions through music or other forms of art from other people. Art begets art. Even cavemen sprawled paintings on walls and ancient peoples creating songs of epic stories in which the melodies helped us to remember the details of the tale. Art is everywhere, especially where ever Humans are.

When the pandemic hit, we all turned to art, movies, tv shows, books, music, video games and other forms of art as a means to alleviate the stress and uncertainty of our isolated worlds at that time. When we feel most alone, we reach out through creative means, be it outgoing or incoming.

To that end, I would love to see more government funded programs to give artists of all kinds grants and opportunities to make their art as free of the stress of financial worries as possible. The purest art I feel comes from the clearest mind.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.antoniogthevoice.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/audio_graffiti
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/antoniogrecothevoice
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/antoniogrecovoice/
• Twitter: https://www.x.com/AntoniotheVoice
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@antoniogthevoice741