Imelda Staunton didn't find her acting voice until she learned to whisper. Here, she shares her techniques for stage, screen and musicals.
"We all did voice classes at RADA. Then I went into repertory theatre, and I spent two or three years doing rep, and then I was cast in Electra. And the director said, "Look, I'm going to send you back to RADA for a couple of weeks for more voice training."At that time my voice was very high, but I had this wonderful teacher who hadn't been there when I was training, called Robert Palmer. I had three sessions with him and he made me whisper all the time, and I was thinking what on earth is this for? But in fact it stops you listening to your own voice and thinking: that sounds marvellous - God I'm good. All you can think of is the breath that you need to take, and the sense of the words. Those sessions changed my voice forever: they centred it and lowered it - I still don't know how.
How do you come up with the voice for a part? I've just finished doing Entertaining Mr Sloane, and I'm aware that by the end the way I spoke was not the way I did at the read-through; the voice developed and changed. It comes from the text, it comes from her past, it comes from the backstory that I've built up. I have created this story, and the voice that comes out of that may have anguish, it may have pain; you have to put in all the layers and come up with the voice. It can be affected by how you're feeling on the day; it may vary slightly during the run of a play. And in the last weeks of rehearsal for theatre work, your voice is always quite tired and croaky. It's a muscle and you are really stretching it. But once the play starts, it all settles in; you get used to it.
You do have to work differently for film. Film is in a different, quieter register, so in some ways you have more scope. You can be very quiet and they'll get it. It's the difference between Vera Drake and Dolores Umbridge in Harry Potter: Dolores has a high voice; she's always speaking, announcing, delivering her words. Vera, on the other hand, is almost speaking her thoughts: "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry" - the words are hardly audible, but she can still be heard.
The problem with films is continuity; you can be doing a big emotional scene and suddenly they're saying: let's wrap it and continue tomorrow. And by that time your voice can be completely different. I warm it up by whispering a little, then speaking a little, and getting the muscles moving round the vocal chords.
As for musicals, I always tell young actors to treat a song as if you're continuing to speak. In 1982 I was in The Beggar's Opera at the National Theatre and the musical director adjusted every key to our individual speaking voices, which was wonderful; it stopped you having that sudden jolt as the actor goes from speaking in a nice alto voice and then vaults off in a soprano.
You do need to be aware of your posture, be aware that if you stick your face forward, you're cutting off your neck, you're breaking the line. I'm very aware of supporting my voice from my bum and my stomach and my chest. The bottom line is that you don't want to mess your voice up. I remember when I was doing Guys and Dolls, there's a really shouty song, and I did think: God I can't do that, I'm going to kill my voice. But you learn how to do it. It was during the same production that I lost my voice once (nothing to do with the shouty song). It was the day before Christmas evening, and I started speaking, and it was OK, and then I started to sing and hardly anything was coming out. I could see the guys on the sound desk wacking everything up. It turned out I had Chinese flu. I had to take 10 days off.
I still think a lot about my voice when I'm performing. I'm always aware that there are five lines coming up that I need to get in a good breath for, or that there's a song coming up so I need to breathe for that. You have to be able to modulate those things all the time and just keep your character going on the surface. I think the best way to prepare your voice for a performance is actually to sleep - if you're lying down and reading, you're still using your muscles. I'm really naughty about exercises, I have to admit. I usually just do a bit of singing, give a couple of shouts and then get on with it."
