The Actor's Body and Voice: How to Train Your Most Important Instrument

As an actor, your body, your voice, and your soul are your instrument. Everything you want to communicate as a character has to come through them. If they are not trained, they will limit you — no matter how much work you do on the inside.

But it does require work, and it requires the right guidance.

The Gut Voice — The Only Voice That Lasts

This is the most important thing I can tell you about your voice: a throat voice will not last. You can push through a performance on it, maybe two, maybe three days — and then it is gone. Laryngitis. Silence. Nothing left to give.

A gut voice is different. It comes from deep in the body — from the diaphragm, from the core — and it gives you a power and a resonance that is, quite simply, endless. The great stage actors know this. The ones who perform eight shows a week for months and walk off stage every night with their voice intact — they are not using their throat. They never were.

This is not a technique you can fake. You have to find it, feel it, and train it until it becomes the only way you speak.

The Exercise: Placing the Breath in the Gut

Here is the exercise I use with actors to help them find their gut voice.

Stand with your feet shoulder-width apart. Bend your knees slightly. Now reach down toward the floor — let your upper body hang, let your arms drop, let your head go. And breathe. Concentrate entirely on placing the breath in the gut. Not in the chest. Not in the throat. Low. Deep. Feel it land below your navel.

As you breathe in this position, make a sound — a simple uuuh. Listen to where it comes from. If it sits in your throat, you are not there yet. If it resonates low, in the belly, in the chest — that is the gut voice. That is what you are looking for.

Come back up slowly, and try to carry that placement with you. Speak from that place. The moment you feel the voice rising back into the throat, return to the exercise. Do it again. Train the body to remember where the voice lives.

The Diagnostic: The Uuuh Sound

You can use the uuuh sound any time — before a rehearsal, before a performance, before a self-tape — to check your placement. It is immediate feedback. You will know instantly whether you are in the gut or in the throat. No coach required. Just honesty with yourself about what you hear.

This is something you can practice alone, every day, until gut placement becomes your default. Until you no longer have to think about it.

What I Learned from Hollywood Legend Robert Easton — Dialect Coach, Actor and Writer

During my training, I studied with Robert Easton — a renowned Hollywood dialect and voice coach known as "The Henry Higgins of Hollywood." It was some of the most valuable work I have done as an actor.

Robert Easton was brought into my life as my Dialect Coach for the character Princess Daisy. I had to learn both a British dialect and an American dialect for this important role for the NBC / Lorimar / MGM Princess Daisy Mini-Series. He taught me to work with sounds at a granular level — individual sounds, their placement, their mechanics, and how breath supports them. When you understand a sound at that level, you can reproduce it accurately and consistently. You are no longer guessing or imitating — you know exactly what you are doing and how to do it.

I carry that knowledge into every voice and accent session at The Actor Studio. Whether the goal is a neutral US studio accent, a British accent, or a specific dialect — the approach is the same: learn the sounds correctly, support them with the breath, and work until they become natural.

Protecting the Voice

Your voice is not invincible. It needs care — especially before and after heavy use.

One of the most effective things you can do is take a large spoonful of liquid honey and let it slide slowly down your throat. Do not swallow it quickly. Let it coat. Then follow it with a cup of Throat Coat herbal tea — sipped slowly, not gulped. This combination soothes, protects, and prepares the vocal cords in a way that no spray or lozenge can match.

Do this before a long rehearsal. Do it after a demanding performance. Make it a ritual.

And avoid whispering when your voice is strained — it is harder on the vocal cords than speaking at full volume. Rest means silence, not whispered conversation.

The Body Is an Athlete's Body

Your body communicates before you say a word. How a character stands, moves, and occupies space tells the audience something immediately — and finding the right physical life for a character is part of the work.

But beyond character work, there is a more fundamental truth: you are an athlete. Your body is your instrument, and it has to be maintained like one. That means physical training — not to look a certain way, but to have the stamina, the flexibility, the physical presence that the work demands.

Stay in shape. Stay ready. Because when the call comes, you will not have time to prepare your body. It has to already be there.

The Emotional Instrument

What makes the actor's instrument different from every other performer's is that it is emotional. You are not playing an external object — you are working with your own body, your own breath, your own voice. The technical and the emotional are inseparable. When the body is tense, the emotions are blocked. When the breath is free and the voice is placed correctly, more becomes possible.

Training the instrument means learning to get out of your own way — so that what you feel can actually be seen and heard.

This is work that benefits from a trained coach. Someone who can hear exactly what you are doing and give you precise, honest feedback. It is not something you can fully develop alone.

Work with Merete Van Kamp — Actress and Coach

At The Actor Studio, voice and body work — including dialect and accent training using the approach I learned from Robert Easton — is part of the coaching I offer. Sessions are tailored to where you are in your development and what the work requires.

One-on-one. Online. Available globally — in Danish, German, French, Spanish, or English.

→ Book your Actor Studio session here.

Le Van Kamp Studio — tools, art, and coaching for the actor's life. Based in Paris. Available worldwide.