While most known for his role as Astarion in Baldur’s Gate 3, actor Neil Newbon has been a huge part of the games industry, often-times behind the scenes. Alongside his vocal performances in games like Resident Evil Village, Date Everything, and others, Newbon has also been a performance capture actor for many other games.
Despite starting as a TV and film actor, Newbon has made his name in games, and jumping performance capture literally saved him from debt. Speaking to FRVR in a recent interview, Newbon explained that the move towards games acting was definitely not easy, and many claimed it would ruin his career instead of save it.
Newbon explained that acting in games really wasn’t seen as a viable career by many agents until very recently. “It’s a younger industry in the sense of performance capture and voice work,” the actor said. “It’s only really been 30 years, I suppose, for VO stuff.”
While movies, theatre, and even TV are seen as good moves for actors, depending on the content, video games were largely seen as a dark mark on an actor’s career, despite the popularity of the medium. “It wasn’t taken seriously for a long time,” he continued. “I’ve done lots of interviews of people telling me not to do it, it would ruin my career, which, you know, I had a career in catering which I was quite happy to have ruined.”
Many look to games acting as a largely voice-driven work, but Newbon’s role in performance capture literally brings characters to life. In his four-and-a-half-year stint working on Larian’s Baldur’s Gate 3, Newbon performed the roles of many characters, not just his own, dictating their movements and mannerisms.
“Performance capture changed everything, changed everything in my life,” the actor said, “including helping me become a better craftsperson, more professional, hopefully more generous as well. And actually helped me enjoy my ride, I’ve had an amazing experience, and it’s still going, I’m very grateful”.
Since the release of Baldur’s Gate 3, Newbon’s career has only continued to climb with the actor taking on more roles while also having the opportunity to turn some down. As a performer behind a now beloved and iconic character, he has been approached to play clone characters for other projects, something the actor doesn’t want to do.
Looking back, Newbon explained that he doesn’t know what he would have done if he didn’t make the jump to games acting all those years ago. “It changed everything in my life,” he said. “I think, without it, I don’t know where I’d be, to be honest. I don’t think I’d be in a good place.”
As far as the difference between acting, voice acting, and performance acting goes, Newbon explains that the “only difference is technical”, adding that they do not agree with “voice actor” as a term for a performer.
“I don’t like the term voice actor,” the actor said. “I quite detest it, actually. And that’s not to say if somebody says, ‘hey, you’re a voice actor’, I’m not going to get angry with them because that’s not fair. It’s an old term, and I think it’s a term that was used to justify sort of lower quality work in games because people didn’t really care as much. Sometimes they did, but often, much older games, 20/30 years ago, people were just like, ‘Well, we’ll just get a voice to do that thing.’”
Whatever the form acting takes—voice performance, motion performance, etc—Newbon explains that it’s “all acting”, no matter what. While some agents may have looked down upon games work in the beginning, now it’s thriving, and any role an actor takes in bringing those characters to life is an important one.
With that said, the actor explains that the most important thing for new actors to know is that it “takes time” to enter any industry. “Anybody that wants to be an actor, regardless the medium you’re in – games, TV, film, theater, whatever – it takes time. You can’t rush it. If you’re lucky enough to get a job early in your career, cool, but if you haven’t done the training work, you might not be able to sustain that success, and luck is very much the residue of design, you have to be ready to be lucky.”
“Failure taught me a huge amount,” Newbon continued. I learned a lot more from failure than anything. Success reveals who you are as a person, and that is also a lesson in there as well.”
As for Newbon’s future, that’s currently under wraps, but the actor does hope that he’ll be able to reprise the role of Astarion for HBO’s upcoming Baldur’s Gate 3 TV series, although they don’t mind if the role gets recast. “I don’t have any ego about my work,” Newbon explained. “I would like to think that I would be okay if that happened. I hope that if it happened, it wouldn’t, but at the same time, you know, I’m a grown up. I’m not a teenager.”
