The voices in my head
I am never going to be the girl of a thousand voices. If I'm lucky, I can swing a few variants on my own voice. I don't really do impressions, so I cringe at auditions that ask you to "match the original". But I do pick up cadences and speech rhythms. I was a little startled by this last night when I was reading Dashiell Hammett's "Maltese Falcon". I've seen the Huston movie enough times (and heard the "Academy Award Theater" OTR) that reading it aloud occasionally was a little distracting. You hear Bogey, but you see Hammett's tough guy. So surprise of my night when I uttered the "You may have the falcon, but we have you" line in a fair imitation of Peter Lorre. And then followed it up later with some of Sidney Greenstreet. I can't do a Bogey and I'm no Mary Astor, but somehow the character actors, I can swing. Maybe because those voices are as clear in my head as those famous lines.