We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Craig Lee Thomas. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Craig Lee below.

Craig Lee, appreciate you joining us today. Can you talk to us about how you learned to do what you do?

I think Stella Adler said it best: “Growth as an actor and growth as a human being are synonymous”. As I’ve gotten older I’ve seen this idea manifest in two really different ways: one on the more artsy side, one on the more technical side. On the one hand, I don’t think you can become a great actor in a vacuum: if all you do is eat, sleep and breathe acting, you’re not going to have time for any life experience along the way to inform your choices or imbue your characters with any kind of veracity. You’re only ever going to be able to play actors, which is, frankly, not the most interesting set of people to inhabit. You have to have other interests and pursuits, time away to recharge and let things germinate, you have to go work a crap job and have a bad date and get angry at someone and make something with your hands, or when you’re back on stage or in the booth, the work will be empty. On the technical side of things, especially for voice acting, I love to encourage my students and myself to cross-train. Taking a clarinet lesson will help you with your voice acting. Learning how to tap dance will help you with your voice acting. Writing a short story will help you with your voice acting. It’s all connected, and the more I’ve been able to draw parallels between other pursuits in my life, from singing to music, even to things like playing volleyball or rolling some dice in a D&D game, the deeper I’ve been able to go with the work.

Craig Lee, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

My name is Craig Lee Thomas, I’m a voice actor, occasional TV-appear-er, and acting teacher based here in LA. My parents met during a production of Twelfth Night in college and I grew up doing musicals at the local community theater and getting pulled out of school to drive 2 hours to audition for Chex commercials in Manhattan, so I don’t think I ever really had a chance to do anything else for a living.

I spent my first few years in LA doing TV and commercials; I got to stuff my face with donuts with Neil Patrick Harris on ‘How I Met Your Mother’, run with the clydesdales for a Budweiser Super Bowl Commercial, got my head cut off with an axe on ‘Criminal Minds’, the usual stuff. I always wanted to get back into VO, so I studied up and cut a demo and was fortunate enough to work on the commercial side of that for a while. If you got sick of hearing “When all you can INSERT FOOD HERE is think about, Postmates” every Pandora break or YouTube pre-roll during the pandemic, I apologize, but it was also paying my mortgage, so, sorry not sorry I guess?

The pandemic was the time that video games started to hit for me, and that’s where I really had that “Oh, THIS is what I’m supposed to do with my life” moment. Getting to inhabit these characters and enliven these worlds that I grew up glued to the TV with as a kid has been an incredibly fulfilling and exciting experience.. If you’re a gamer and you’re looking at my giant head in whatever picture is appearing next to this and thinking “I’ve seen that guy before”, it’s probably from the Helldivers 2 intro cinematic, where I brainwashed you into joining the SEAF. You’ve probably killed me or teamed up with me in a bunch of other games over the years from Warcraft to Starfield to Honkai Star Rail to Star Wars Squadrons, and hey, maybe you were one of the (very few) people who chose to romance my character in ‘Wylde Flowers’ on Apple Arcade.

The thing I’m most proud of, and the thing I strive for with every single job, no matter how big or small, is creating a captivating and interesting character. I grew up right at the cusp of acting really being important in video games, instead of just an afterthought, and I know that the stories and VO performances in early games like Metal Gear Solid and Max Payne were what got me hooked, so I want to always make the most interesting and justified choices I can to really make my characters pop.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

I think one of the great disservices of a lot of acting training, especially at the Bachelor’s degree level, is that you have to immediately exit your program and JUST pursue acting. I spent a lot of my early 20s blocking off tons of time during my days for auditions that didn’t come, saying no to interesting or weird opportunities to perform, travel, or just engage in other pursuits to hold out for jobs that didn’t pan out. Now that I’m older, I’m making my living not as an actor, but an artist, and I mean that in the least hippie dippie way possible: it’s almost impossible to just make your living from acting, certainly not just one field of acting. I audition for tv, movies, commercials, and on the VO side of thing, every possible permutation you can think of, from live dubbing documentaries to narrating YouTube videos to video games to, quite literally, whatever else somebody throws at me. I also teach, write and direct demos and host workshops. THAT’S how you get by in this industry. So, for younger folks, my advice is always the same: take the internship at the casting office. Work as an agent’s assistant. Run the desk at a recording studio. Your friend’s movement company is doing a site-specific piece in a parking garage in Toronto for 8 weeks? Do it. You’re not missing anything by staying around during a time where for most people, the opportunities are pretty slim. Go out there and make some connections and have some experiences. It’s going to help you out in the long run.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

Getting to play every single day. There isn’t a session that goes by where I”m in the booth or on set or on the stage where I don’t have the thought, “I can’t believe I’m getting paid for this”. “Do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life” is total bullshit. It’s still work. It’s still hard. There are times that because of burnout or stress or a million other reasons I have to drag my feet to get into the booth, that’s just being human. But even on those days, once I’m in the mix and figuring out the character or tightening up the read, that moment still hits when you realize “You’re figuring out what a cheese dragon sounds like when he gets hit with a sword, and because of this, someone is going to send you a check.” Nothing better.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.craigleethomasvo.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/itsmecraiglee
• Twitter: https://x.com/itsmecraiglee
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/CraigLeeThomas

Image Credits

Joe Hubbard, Goodbye Kansas, CBS, Arrowhead Game Studios, Real Voice LA