The actor, who played beloved vampire elf Astarion from Baldur's Gate 3, was once £34,000 in debt until acting gave them a lifeline.
It's no secret that the cast Baldur's Gate 3 are enthusiastic about their role in both the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game and other games. Neil Newbon, the iconic voice of Astarion, is definitely no exception. During a recent TEDx talk, which can now be viewed on YouTube (Thank you, Gamer), the actor explains this.
First describing his role as “a mixture of motion capture and voice acting in film, television, animation, stage and screen”, Newbon admitted that it was “wonderful”. He details how you need to “use your imagination” to truly shine – “a very beautiful way of working.”
While Newbon says, “I love my job and what I do,” he also admits that “getting to this point took a lot of pain, a lot of hard lessons.” For some time, the actor felt on top of the world. He got roles left and right, traveled and “didn’t care about anything.” Newbon soon “realized something was wrong.” He was “more desperate to be in the room, even more desperate to do what I thought the directors were asking me to do.”
He continues: “I tried to play what I thought they wanted instead of listening to my gut instinct, which I had relied on for so long. I also began to realize that I was being typecast.”
From there, things continued to go downhill, with Newbon unable to find new acting work and falling further into debt. “I was £34,000 in debt and living in a really run-down place,” the actor recalls. “Things were going very badly.”
What was the impetus that allowed Newbon to become successful again and become a prominent figure in the video game community? Article in PC gamer the magazine appears to be one he “accidentally flipped through… 18 years ago or something like that.” It was about voice work in games, and Newbon said it “blows my mind.” “You can do it as a job. Of course I'm a gamer. Why am I not doing this? I'm an actor.”
Newbon then spotted a photo of the motion capture work and it inspired him to try it himself: “This guy looks like he's having the time of his life!” The actor ended up landing his first video game role in Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Future Soldier, which was followed by “so much work.” “It was an amazing time because there were so many games with so few actors,” he declares – and although most people didn't believe it, he persisted.
“Nobody believed it. Former friends, ex-lovers, ex-agents and even some family members,” as Newbon put it. “They just thought it was a bad idea. But my instinct, which I had lost long ago, came back and told me that this was the way forward.”
It's safe to say that the gut feeling was solid in the end – various rewards and difficult choices out of debt later, he plays some of the most beloved characters in modern gaming, and Astarion is just one of them.
As the actor concludes: “I would say that filming acting – without being glib – saved my life. But not only that, but it also gave her new strength.”
