Let's say you're a successful voice over actor. You run from recording studio to recording studio all around town creating personalities and characters for some of the best animated shows. After all the years of training and classes, you've become the consummate professional with years of experience under your belt. We wondered, could a veteran like that still be surprised by something in the business? AWN talked to nine of the hottest working voice actors and asked, what didn't you realize or what did you learn once you started getting regular work?

Even though Nancy Cartwright has reached the top of her profession by voicing a multitude of characters including Bart Simpson, she still believes there's more to be learned and continues to study her craft. Bart Simpson image rights: Fox.

Nancy Cartwright
A native of Ohio, Nancy came to Los Angeles to attend UCLA in 1987 and got her first professional gig shortly thereafter as the voice of Gloria in Richie Rich. Since, she has earned an Emmy for creating the voice of Bart in The Simpsons. Currently, Nancy can also be heard as Chuckie in Rugrats, Earl the Squirrel in Timberwolf and Chip in The Kellys, an Internet show produced by Nancy's company SportsBlast.

To answer the questions I am going to address the general viewpoint of what it means to be a "professional." As the saying goes, "A writer writes." I don’t know who said it, but it totally makes sense, no matter the profession. A painter paints. A bricklayer, lays bricks. Simple. Suffice it to say, a voice actor does voices.

Now, I have been blessed with an "arsenal" of characters, if you will. I have never studied "how to do voices." I just would call up these characters that I developed through experience and slotted them into whatever audition I was doing.

In retrospect, what I didn’t realize was that there was so much more that I could be doing. I never felt the need to do any more than what I was already doing because I worked a lot. I did tons of characters for as many shows and had a lot of success in doing so. And this was before The Simpsons! It is only now, after 23 years as a professional voice actor that I am opening myself up to actually studying voice work. You, dear reader, might think that perhaps, "Nancy has gone a little bonkers." And that might very well be! After all, why would one of the top voice artists think for one second that she would have to actually study? Why? Because none of us can afford the arrogance of believing that we already know everything there is to know about any one subject. And that is what I learned: that I didn’t know all already! And guess what? I am having a ball!

Dionne Quan
A crystal-clear image of herself as an actress led Dionne Quan — born almost entirely blind — undaunted down a career path beginning in childhood. The fiercely imaginative 24 year-old plays cowboy-booted, spunky Kimi Finster, the newest addition to the Emmy award winning Rugrats cast.

Until I was working regularly, I didn’t give much thought to the numerous sound effects that are so necessary in order to convey action in a story. I learned how to do that on the job, and learned all of the incredible nuances from listening to my coworkers. It’s a blast!

A microphone is a very sensitive piece of equipment that picks up the softest of sounds. I didn’t fully comprehend that until I was called on to read lengthy pieces of copy at an unbelievably rapid pace. Microphones easily pick up the soft sound of my fingers flying across the page as I read.