Meet Jett Barker | Actor & Musician

We had the good fortune of connecting with Jett Barker and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Jett, how do you think about risk?
Fundamentally, my approach to risk-taking is similar to my general approach for any intensive or difficult activity: strategize as much as possible in advance, and subdivide tasks as much as possible in order to make each individual step more manageable.

My experiences with risk-taking are heavily tied to the complexity of my medical history, especially with regards to surgical intervention. By and large, however, those events resulted in an improvement to my quality of life rather than any detriment—even though some of them had an extensive adjustment period.

As a career, acting is a low-predictability field, so risk mitigation on my end generally means not betting the whole of my financial stability on acting alone and minimizing potential frustration as much as possible. I admittedly don’t pursue cold marketing as often as some of my peers, as doing so is energy-intensive for me such that it often isn’t an ideal use of my resources.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
My introduction to voice acting from a practical, hands-on perspective was extremely unusual! As a teenager, I was fortunate enough to be admitted to a weekend of in-studio classes fixated around character voice acting and ADR; while the courses were intended for adults, the instructor suspected that my background in classical piano would allow me to adapt to the dubbing process with extreme efficiency. (He was right.) I was terrified and went in with virtually zero acting experience, but came out of that duo of 8-hour workshops knowing that I wanted to pursue acting professionally.

I was still young enough that I hadn’t yet started university, and while my parents didn’t disapprove of my pursuing a Theatre major, I still took Computer Science as my minor for both practical reasons and because I genuinely enjoy working with technology.

As an actor, I was and remain very privileged to have hoarded copious amounts of acting knowledge before beginning to work in the field in earnest. While my technical skill as an actor isn’t unique, I think that the utility of applying theatre methodology to voiceover is still underestimated by much of the voice acting population.

I strongly subscribe to the belief that innate talent is somewhat illusory and ultimately limited; my ability as an actor would have remained extremely limited if not for continuously applying acquired skills over time. The learning curve was incredibly steep for me for a handful of different reasons; a major component is because certain approaches to acting are markedly less compatible with me than others. Having access to theatre education across a variety of acting methodologies helped counterbalance this, which is a large piece of why I perpetually champion the development of specialized theatre education that can be made more logistically and financially accessible than traditional conservatory environments.

Overall, I think my primary assets as an actor are my versatility and vocal dexterity, depth of knowledge, precision with regards to characterization and specialized vocal technique (e.g. dialect work, creature performance, vocal combat), and interdisciplinary approach to work.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
I moved to Los Angeles in August of 2021, and though I’ve remained something of a hermit since then, I do have a smattering of places I’d recommend to folks!

Both the Getty Museum and Getty Villa are definitely worth visiting; the latter is smaller, but may feel more manageable for folks looking to fill just a couple hours.

There are a smattering of very pleasant cafés and specialized shops in Burbank—snagging a coffee and then walking to the year-’round Halloween store with friends is a lovely experience.

If you’re interested in film history and don’t mind navigating the irregular street layout in Hollywood, the Academy Museum is also absolutely worth paying a visit.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
If I could, I’d give a shoutout to every single person who’s contributed to my development as an artist—but that doesn’t seem reasonable, so I’ll try to keep it brief.

First and foremost, I’d like to give credit to both of my parents and my piano teacher (who essentially acted as my third parent growing up); my family doesn’t come from an arts-heavy background, but their support throughout my life has been incredibly consistent.

I’d also like to give a nod to Victor Talmadge, Patrick Russell, and Jessica Berman as three theatre instructors responsible for introducing me to methodologies and technical principles that I use on a daily basis.

I have vastly more folks—friends, mentors, colleagues, and beyond—who I’d love to mention here, but for the sake of brevity, I’ll just close this out by saying “If you suspect you’d be listed in a more extensive shoutout, you’re almost certainly correct.”

Website: https://jettbarker.com/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/barkervoiceover