🎙️ What’s the Difference Between a Voiceover Artist and a Voice Actor?
If you’re looking to hire a voice over artist for your project, you’ve probably seen the terms voiceover artist and voice actor thrown around a lot.
But are they the same thing? Do they bring different skills to the table? And how do you know which one you need?
Let’s dive into it and look at the difference 👇
🎧 Voiceover Artist: Delivering Clear, Professional Narration
A voiceover artist is typically someone who specialises in narrating scripts in a clean, clear, and engaging way, often without needing to portray a character.
Common examples would be:
You can click each of those links to visit those pages and hear some real examples!
The goal for a voiceover artist is usually clarity, engagement, and tone control, making sure the message is easy to understand, sounds trustworthy, and feels appropriate for the audience. Naturally these vary from job to job meaning the tone can flick between warm, friendly and chatty to a more clear and direct and authoritative style, and particularly for me, I enjoy doing more dramatic, emotive reads aswell
✅ Skills Needed:
- Strong vocal delivery
- Consistent pacing and tone
- Ability to sound natural and authentic even when reading technical material
As a British male voiceover artist, I often work with brands who want a confident, friendly tone, that’s versatile and can sound different from script to script.
So in summary, a voiceover artist is someone who can deliver those brand messages, explainer video content or adverts in a way that feels relatable and easy to digest, aswell as sounding professional and well delivered
🎭 A Voice Actor: Bringing Characters and Stories to Life
A voice actor, on the other hand, is all about the performance.
A Voice Actor will dive into characters, create emotions, and often perform lines that require imagination and dramatic timing.
Common examples of voice acting work:
- Animation and cartoons
- Video games
- Audio dramas
- Character driven commercials
- Dubbing and ADR for TV and film
As Voice Actor is an actor no different to what you’d expect on screen or stage, the key difference is all these emotions have to be delivered through a microphone so the listener feels they can emotionally buy into the character.
A Voice Actor can switch emotions quickly and adapt to the story’s needs, whether that’s something more fun and quirky, to a character with depth and emotion.
✅ Skills Needed:
- Acting training or experience
- Ability to interpret scripts and bring emotional depth
- Strong imagination and improvisation skills
🔄 Where They Overlap
Here’s the truth about their styles:
Most professional voice artists are also voice actors.
And most voice actors are also skilled voiceover artists.
There’s a lot of crossover between the two, especially as modern projects often blend both styles.
For example:
- A long form commercial that is character led and spoken from their perspective.
- A commercial might need a characterful delivery but still sound clean and professional.
That’s why hiring someone like me who can wear both hats gives your project an extra edge, as I have a wealth of experience voicing so many different projects that incorporate both styles
🧠 Why It Matters When Choosing a Voice
When choosing the right voiceover artist or voice actor for your project, it helps to know what your script demands:
- If you need clear, professional narration (corporate, explainers, training), my experience voicing a wealth of this work as a voiceover artist can help you.
- If you need emotional depth, character, or storytelling (audio drama, animation, games, story-driven ads), my experience voicing real people in commercials, aswell as my experience in acting school, can bring those characters to life with realism
🙌 Why Work With Me?
I bring the best of both worlds!
With over 7 years experience as a full time British male voice over artist and voice actor, I’ve voiced everything from character led commercials like this one for Caritas, to more fun quirky voiceovers like this one for Clarity Housing, always adapting to what the project needs.
I spent 2 years at the Manchester School of Acting, which helped develop my craft so I can:
- Add subtle emotional layers when needed
- Create believable characters
- Still deliver polished, professional narration
Whether you need a clean corporate voiceover or record as a believable person, I can help bring your script to life!
You can contact me directly at michael@manchestervo.co.uk too or feel free to call me on 07517 577 463