Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Gideon Kimmel. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Gideon, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What did your parents do right and how has that impacted you in your life and career?
Oh wow there’s so much. My mom has always been my best friend. We have the kind of relationship where we can have a full-on 20 minute conversation that sounds like absolute gibberish to other people, but to us? Perfectly comprehendible. On a more serious parenting note, she’s always treated me like an equal, even when I was a kid. There was never any “I’m your mother so you have to do what I say!” She always approached lessons from a rational perspective, like “Here’s why we do x” or, “If you do y, z’s going to happen, so plan accordingly.” Her method to parenting definitely helped me to develop my ability to think for myself. We’ve also always been very emotionally open with each other. No emotion has ever really felt off-limits. When I was angry, she would give me a pillow to punch, when I was sad, she held the space for me to cry and I think that this has really paid off in the work I do as an actor and my work as a human.
My stepdad entered the picture a little later and while his lessons weren’t always as overt, I’ve really grown to appreciate them as I’ve gotten older. He’s set such a good example for how to develop a strong work ethic, he’s the driving force behind my love for cooking, witty sarcasm, overanalyzing media, and above all, he’s really demonstrated how to show up for the people you love, especially when times get tough.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
My name is Gideon Kimmel and I’m a professional voice actor! I work in commercial, narration, animation, and video games but I’ve always been a story teller. I’ve dabbled in writing short stories, singing/songwriting, photography, theater, sleight-of-hand magic, I even created a whole world for my Dungeons and Dragons campaign, but the through-line has always been my love of feeling immersed.
I knew about voice over for a long time but I was set on going to grad school and becoming a psychologist until the pandemic hit. It was the summer of 2020, grad schools were charging in-person tuition for online classes, and I went on a hike with a few of my friends. After a long bout of silly voices, my friend JC turned to me and said “Dude you should be a voice actor!” I remember feeling like, “Yeah I’ve thought about it, it’d be cool, but I don’t even know where to start.” Luckily, those early pandemic days left me with lots of time, motivation, and existential dread, so I figured, why not? I would check out this voice acting thing. I got home after the hike and immediately started googling how to become a voice actor. I soon found my first voice over coach named Shelly Shenoy, who gave me a breakdown of the industry, put me in contact with my longtime acting coach Celia Schaefer, gave me recommendations on starting gear, and from there the training wheels were off, I was going to be a voice actor.
One of the first things I was ever told about voice over came during a conversation with my first ever acting coach long before I broke into the business. She said voice over is competitive, you need to be able to stand out from everyone else. At the time I took this to mean that there was only one winner, that I had to have the biggest social media following, that my presence had to be the absolute loudest to get noticed. I didn’t like the sound of that, and I really struggled in the beginning because, to a casting director, how was I different from people who looked like me and sounded like me? What I would come to realize with time, experience, and the help of some lovely voice over friends is that, despite popular belief, it’s not a competition. The difference between me and the guy who sounds like me is that we come with completely unique sets of attitudes, opinions, and experiences that influence how we see the world, and by extension, our work as actors. Now when I step in the booth to audition, my only goal is to offer my interpretation of a script that’s based in truth, whether I’m playing a character in an audio drama or narrating an ad for Cheetos. I figure out the story the script is trying to tell and then come up with scenarios or “given circumstances” that allow me to attach specific opinions and real emotions to the words in that script. At the end of the day, I can only give my best performance, whether I book the job is not in my control and that’s actually very liberating.
It’s easy to get caught up in the art of the voice over, but I also solve real problems for my clients. The industry has shifted towards a more conversational, human-centered approach to advertising and I offer that sense of informal, best friend energy. People’s attention spans are getting shorter and shorter, especially when it comes to things like commercials and explainer videos, but having myself or another experienced voice actor on the project increases the likelihood that viewers watch or listen longer, remember the product or service, and share it with friends. Additionally with the rise of AI and voice cloning, we need real humans now more than ever. Having a real person behind the mic communicates the kind of authenticity and relatability that a machine just can’t.
It’s been a long three years. I’m nowhere near where I want to be, but I’m so proud of my progress thus far. I’ve gotten to work directly with companies like GrubHub and Khiel’s, I’ve narrated museum exhibits for The MET and The American History Museum, voiced Spotify Ads for CapitalOne, McDonalds, United Airlines, and countless others, and I’ve gotten to work on incredibly fun independent projects like “Afterlife Defense Department,” and “The Judgement of Quintus.”
I can’t wait to see what kinds of stories they’ll let me tell next.
Looking back, are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?
Yeah! I joined the Voice Actors of NYC Facebook group a few months after I started auditioning but boy do I wish I’d taken advantage of its teaching resources earlier. It would’ve completely changed the trajectory of how I approached establishing myself, for example, my first commercial demo. Quality demos are important in the voice over world, so they’re pretty expensive to produce, at around $2,000. While my first demo was good for my skill level at the time, my abilities as an actor grew a lot faster than my demo showed, and so I was quickly left with a product that wasn’t the best representation of my work.
I was so eager to dive head-first into the industry, and while I had a good start in terms of setup and a budding sense of technique, there were so many things I just didn’t know yet. My academic background is in psychology, so I had no sense of how to operate like a business which wound up costing me a lot of money because I accepted lowball rates for jobs that could’ve paid much higher had I known to advocate for industry-standard pay. Had I taken a couple more months, or even a year to really fill in my knowledge gaps with extra training in both aspects of voice over, I could’ve saved myself a lot of headaches, money, and had a more solid starting point from which to build my business. But hey, we all have to start somewhere and I’m thankful to have surrounded myself with a great community who helped me fill in those gaps. Now when people approach me looking to get into the business, I advise them to take it slow, don’t rush to make a demo, and invest in quality training in all areas of the business. Once you feel confident that you can deliver your best work, from quoting a rate, to giving a standout performance, to delivering the finished file, then you get out there and start auditioning.
Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?
Oh absolutely! My goal is discover all the little hidden bits of myself through the work. I get to retain my sense of childlike wonder, as well as take on deeper, more grounded material. I’ve always had to juggle my natural silliness with being more stoic and professional, but this art allows me to explore and express all aspects of who I am. Just stepping into the booth and opening my audition emails fills me with so much joy because I never know what aspect of myself I’ll get to bring to the script. It’s is as much an act of self-preservation as it is a career path. 
Contact Info:
- Website: www.gideonkimmel.com
- Instagram: gideonkvo
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gideonkimmel/