Denise Oliver has been a successful voice actor in Canada for decades, but far more impressive than that longevity is a heartwarming legacy. Both her daughters, 20-year-old Grace and 18-year-old Abby, also have built accomplished careers in the field.
For the Olivers, voice acting is something of a family business, and even as the industry falters, for this family, business still booms. While Grace is currently at university, Abby stars in Carl the Collector, on Amazon Prime, and Denise most recently showed up on Rosie’s Rules, also on Prime.
Talking to the trio is a special treat, as Grace and Abby are both mature beyond their years and have a unique understanding of the entertainment industry that adults decades their senior still don’t possess. They all spoke to us over the New Year’s holiday from their home outside Toronto.
Insights: Lessons from the Olivers
- Gain an early start in the industry through workshops and exposure to the field.
- Understand that not being selected for a part isn’t personal; it’s about the casting agents’ preferences, similar to choosing a favorite candy.
- Stay flexible and ready to transition to different roles within the industry as opportunities and personal circumstances change.
Let’s start with how this whole thing started. I’m assuming, Denise, it began with you getting into voice acting, and your daughters followed you, correct?
Denise Oliver: That’s right. I studied theater at university. I’m originally from New Brunswick, and I moved to Toronto, thinking, “Here I am, I’m going to become an actor.” Then I realized that everybody in Toronto was going to be an actor as well, so it wasn’t as smooth a transition as I thought it would be.
I got my first real gig when the preschool network Tree House TV launched in 1997. I was hired to be an on-air host, along with my acting partner, Kathleen LaRue. I played a clown type with big rosy cheeks and long braids. We did the interstitials, filling the gaps between the shows. I also got to voice some of the promos, which was my first time doing voice acting. I decided, after my foray into on-air work, that I would dedicate my career to voice acting.
How did your daughters get into it?
DO: Grace was born when I was voice acting on a show called My Friend Rabbit. My sister, who also had a newborn baby, would come with me to recordings and take care of my baby along with hers so that I could come out and nurse her when she needed to be fed.
Abby was born a couple of years later and it was the same thing. They were raised in a recording studio. So when Grace was about … what, you were nine and a half or 10?
Grace Oliver: I was eight or nine. If I remember correctly, we all did an audition for an on-camera commercial in New Brunswick, and I booked it. After that, I started doing more auditions. I wasn’t unionized, though. Then I booked Parka, the Parks Canada mascot, and did that for about two years.
DO: Grace, can I interrupt? I think your brain is a little foggy. What happened is that Grace had asked me if she could start being a voice actor. She saw children doing it when I would take her to work with me.
I’m not a stage mom. I have no aspirations for my children, but she really wanted to try, so I signed her up for a workshop, which I thought would be good enough. But she enjoyed it, which fueled her desire to do it.
She met with my agent, who decided to represent her, and then she was the voice of Parka for some interstitial spots. That’s where it started for her. That commercial in New Brunswick, we all auditioned for it, and I got to be a background actor to my daughter. (Laughs)
Abby, how did you factor in all this?
Abby Oliver: All three of us auditioned for the show Dot. I originally auditioned for the main character, and instead, I got a secondary character.
DO: Tell them why you auditioned.
AO: I was like, seven.
DO: (Laughs) Our agent had sent Grace and me to an audition. I auditioned for the mom, and Grace was auditioning for a couple of characters. We were recording at home in our basement studio and I told Abby to go upstairs and get ready for bed, “Grace, you go downstairs and record for your audition.” And what does Abby say? “I want to audition too!” But why did you want to audition?
AO: Because I didn’t want to go to bed.
DO: So she avoided going to bed by auditioning.
And a career is born because of childhood stubbornness!
AO: (Laughs) Yeah, exactly. We ended up all auditioning, and I ended up booking a part. At first, it looked like I had gotten the part that Grace wanted, but then she booked another character in it, and my mom was booked as the mother of the main character in the show.
Is there ever a competition between the two of you for roles?
GO: Not really, because it was out of our hands. It was like, “Okay, we’re both gonna try, and we’ll see what happens, but it’s not up to us, and it’s not necessarily a reflection of each other, it’s more just a reflection of what the casting agents are looking for.” I was always happy for Abby when she booked things that I didn’t, and I’m sure she was always happy for me.
AO: I feel like there was never any hostility towards her if she got something that I didn’t. I was just so happy for her.
I’m sort of fascinated by the level of maturity and self-actualization you both had as children that you were able to recognize something like that.
AO: We learned a lot from our mom because before we got into it, she would explain to us that we might not get it, and there’s no reason to be disappointed. It’s not because it’s something that we did.
There were going to be other opportunities, so we always knew that if we didn’t get one, we might get the next. So if Grace got it and I didn’t, I would always think, “Well, this just wasn’t the one for me, so maybe I’ll get the next one.” I think that our mom planted that seed in our brains very early on, so it was easier for us to then apply it when it became a reality. I found it pretty easy, and I loved being happy for my sister when she got things.
GO: We also booked a lot of things together. Well, we booked two things together, but that’s more than people usually do. (Laughs)
Denise, I feel like you could hang out a shingle as an actor whisperer because if you raise your daughters with this understanding, you could make a lot of actors’ lives a lot easier if they had this philosophy.
DO: I have had that. A lot of really wonderful parents asked me to help them with their children’s auditions, and one parent told me I needed to offer parent workshops. “You need to help us teach our children, please. We don’t have that type of support dedicated to helping kids learn the business.” One mother in particular said to me, “Look, you create a workshop for children, and I’ll fill it for you.” That’s how I started coaching.
The analogy that I use in my workshops is I get every child to pick their favorite chocolate bar. You like Kit Kat, you like Wunderbar, you like gummy bears. Okay, now we all like different things. Was one better than the other? No, they’re all delicious, and that’s what casting is experiencing when we send in auditions. They’re being offered a spread of delicious chocolate bars, but they can only have one, so they pick the one that they crave the most for this particular experience. We’re all delicious chocolate bars, so if you audition and you don’t get the part, it doesn’t make you less delicious.
It also helped parents, because a lot of the children come into this industry seeing it as a competition because of the culture of children’s extracurricular activities, and I try to drill it into the parents that we’re playing roles, and sometimes we get the benefit to get paid to do it.
I love that analogy about the chocolate bars. The one issue I would take is that nobody would pick Kit Kat as their favorite.
DO: Oh, you’d be surprised. I get a lot of Kit Kats. What’s yours? You wouldn’t pick a Kit Kat for the part?
Snickers. And I wouldn’t pick a Kit Kat because I’m a sane and rational human being who understands that Kit Kat is the dregs of the candy bar world.
DO: Maybe you’re missing the Kit Kat experience.
I am a 54-year-old man. I have had all the candy experiences. (Everyone laughs) We’re losing focus here. So many people desperately try to break into voice acting, and you three just kind of eased into it.
DO: You know, being on the air in Canada worked against me. People didn’t take me seriously because they said “You’re a clown, you’re not an actor.” But one person I had worked with became the producer of an animated show, and she brought me in for that.
It is a tough industry to break into. The family is small and tight, but the kids came in at a time when there was this transition when they were hiring children to do the kids’ voices rather than adults. They came in just at the right time, but now, the industry has all but collapsed. There’s no work. Nothing is happening in this industry. We’re so lucky that we’re even recording anything right now.
That’s a good segue into the other question I wanted to ask Abby and Grace. You both seem like you have a good sense of yourselves. I’m curious if the experience you had doing that kind of work in a very difficult industry, and having an understanding of how it operated, affected how you lived your lives outside of it.
GO: I think it gave me a better understanding of professionalism, which helped me at 18. I got my first job outside of voice acting in dog grooming. I was the youngest person there by at least two to three years, and something I always got was that you work hard, you respect the people you work with. You learn to be collaborative with people. You learn your place, how to stand up for yourself and when to let things slide. I think that’s given me an advantage.
Abby, do you feel that?
AO: I have a little bit of a similar experience. I don’t get sucked into the drama with people my age, and they don’t like that. I think very differently, sometimes maybe too differently, and it’s often very difficult for me to understand kids my age.
It’s just as difficult for them to understand me because I think about situations and I pull back to analyze instead of jumping in. I think that working in the industry with adults has helped me understand a lot of situations that are difficult and will help me a lot as I get older.
DO: Darren and I have always been the type of parents who’ve talked to our children very openly. We’ve always talked about why we’re having a reaction, or why we’re feeling this way. They’re both deep thinkers, and they analyze situations and human behavior. They’re both very good at that.
Do the two of you want to continue doing voice acting, or are you phasing it out of your lives?
AO: I’m getting up to that age where they don’t want you anymore. The funny thing is, the show that I’m working on now, they didn’t realize that I was 18, and the girl who plays my twin sister in the show, I think she’s 12, and they thought that I was also 12. (Laughs) I think that that’s going to help me a lot in the future, that I have sort of a higher pitch to my voice.
Honestly, it’s never guaranteed, so I will be looking into getting a more stable job, but the fact that I’m already in the industry will help a lot with moving forward. I haven’t auditioned in two years, but I do want to keep it in my life for as long as I can, and as long as the industry allows me and the universe allows me. It’s very fun.
GO: I’m enjoying working consistently in dog grooming, but I am going to university for film studies, so I mean, we’ll see where that takes me. I’m more interested in production than I am in voice acting, but it’s still something I would do. If there were opportunities, I’d still audition for things, but I plan to stay in the industry to some extent.
Do the three of you aspire now, as you’re all adults, to work together on something?
DO: It would be a dream come true for me. Working on Dot, this was many years ago when things were different, but I got to experience that with my children.
So many parents show up to work with their kids, and they don’t get to be part of it. I got to stand there and see them experience joy, make friends and fulfill their creative spirits, and it was just such a privilege to share that with them. So anytime I get to work with my kids, even at home, if we do something together, I get such a thrill out of just being together.
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