How a Plus-One Led to a VO Career — Meet Mark T. Elliott

🔵 — Can you tell us a bit about your background and how you got into voice acting?

My name is Mark T. Elliott, and the beginning of my VO career was a complete happenstance. A friend of mine was telling me about an open house downtown for a voice-over school that had just started a full-time diploma program. He wanted to go but was nervous about being alone and needed a ride, so I went as his plus one.
I always had a passing interest in voice-over, being a huge fan of animation, video games, and audio dramas, but I never thought about pursuing it as a career. I thought it was a guarded circle that only opened to a select few. But the open house opened my eyes to how wide the voice-over world really was, and I left feeling... a pull.

Two years later, my friend is now a librarian, and I’m playing Trey in this wonderful audio drama! And this role is what I live for in VO. Commercials and narration pay the bills, but as I said, what I’ve always loved was animation, video games, and, of course, audio dramas. Bringing characters to life is what brings me fulfillment.

🔵 — Do you have a personal story or moment that really stuck with you along the way?

This last May, I was the best man for my best friend’s wedding. To honour 23 years of friendship — and with me being dramatic, a voice actor, and a writer — I put everything into my best man’s speech.
I needed to make him (and everyone else) bawl. By all accounts, I was pretty successful.
But even being so focused on making my loved ones cry, somewhere in the back of my mind was the thought, "This would be great VO reference..."
Lo and behold, half a year later, I went back to that moment to make Trey’s best man toast and speech to Simon!

🔵 — What did you enjoy most about working on Finding You?

From the moment I read the audition slides, I was in love with the dialogue. Everything that was written was so genuine and easy to say, and you’re not always so lucky as a VA.
Every actor I know has multiple stories where they’ve looked at a script and went, "...no real person would say this."
But Finding You’s script had no such moments.

I also just love Trey. He might be the easiest character I’ve ever recorded for, because 90% of him is just me. When doing script analysis, there’s a lot of deliberation on, "how would this character say this?" But with Trey, it was mostly, "how would I say this?"

That said, if he were real, I do wish he’d charge his phone and talk about his feelings more. But that would make for a far less interesting story, wouldn’t it?

🔵 — Where can listeners follow your work or find you online?

You can find me at my site: bookmarkvo.com, or wherever else I am @bookmarkvo.
Except for Instagram, where a dead account took my handle — so I’m @bookmarkva there.