I know there are some wacky voiceover jobs out there but I wanted to hear about the crème de la crème of weird. Here are the answers my friends and fellow voiceover actors provided.
“Good Question. I have done everything from recorded phone sex fantasies to people’s voicemails. One strange one was calling up a friend of a pilot – they were in class together and the guy had set it up with me to call his friend on his cell at a particular time and pretended to be a girl he was eyeing at a bar the night before, all sexy sounding, saying I wanted to meet him, and how cute he was. It was $100 for 5 minutes of my time.” - Aly Steel
“I had to moan and cry in a Phelps Memorial Hospital commercial because “I was in so much pain from arthritis...” Only had a few words — most of it was moaning... Did it pay well? Not great, but it took me all of 15 minutes at my home studio w/the client on the phone. $50 for about 15 minutes......maybe that's good...?” -Marian Massaro
”Oh, so many!!! I was among the group supplying the battle VO for the movie Born on the Fourth of July. They recorded us on a polo field in LA. A former green beret was the technical advisor, who barked out our lines as if he was giving orders. He had a stick and would smack us on the thigh if we got our jargon wrong. I got bruised, a torn hamstring, sunburn, and a bee sting from that voiceover job.” - Bob Bergen
“ I said "Woo Hoo" for a TV commercial. It paid my rent for a year!” - Mandy Kaplan
“I recently did a live narration for an awards ceremony and the client was a major player in the finance industry. It paid well but it was strange in the fact that it happened on the exact week that Lehman Brothers and Bear Sterns went into financial ruin. I was wondering if the client was going to have to apply bailout money toward my fee, but in the end it all worked out.” – Matt Wolfe
“Dairy Queen. I was flown to Mexico City because they were shooting a ton of spots with “American-looking” local talent and all the DQ brass was down there. They didn’t want to ISDN so they flew me and a female talent all the way to Mexico City from Vancouver. We arrived at 1 AM. The session was at 9 AM in the worst studio I ever worked in. I leaned over to the other talent and said “we’ll be redoing this in Vancouver. Mark my words.” We went for lunch in a place where Pancho Villa reportedly rode in on his horse celebrating the revolution and shooting his gun (bullet holes are still in the cathedral ceiling). Back on the plane at 4 PM. Done. And yes, we redid all the spots the next week via ISDN to Minneapolis.” – Ian James Corlett.
“I had to spit in a commercial. My line was four words and then spitting. The client actually said, 'You’re my favorite spitter.' Um, thanks. For what I had to do and the 6 minutes it took – yes. I can honestly say it’s the most money I’ve ever been paid to spit."
– Lewis Banks
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