Dialect Coaching
Accent Reduction
On Camera Audition
VoiceOver Coaching
TESTIMONIALS
“I encourage ALL the actors who study with me to learn Karen’s brilliant approach to accents & accent reduction. Marlon Brando once said he didn’t feel he mastered acting until he mastered accents. There is no doubt that Karen is the place to go to master accents. Not only do the finest actors seek Karen out but so do other top accent coaches. That Karen inspires confidence and excellence in actors in an environment of generosity, respect and love is the icing on the cake."
"Karen Strassman is an amazing coach and person. She is deeply invested in her clients’ success and works hard and consistently to achieve their goals. I’ve been taking coaching lessons with Karen for about a year and half on and off due to my busy schedule but I can constantly hear her above my shoulder when I speak English in a good and encouraging way."
Caroline Amiguett
"Karen is an amazing multitalented human being with a big heart of gold and she is also a brilliant accent coach with a deep understanding of her craft. She makes you feel immediately at ease, makes the work fun and she really knows what she is doing. I warmly recommend Karen to everyone!"
Marjo-Riikka Makela
"Karen is amazing. She taught me in 3 classes what other teachers tried to achieve in a year. She's very demanding, clear and specific. The day I achieve my perfect my American accent, it will be mostly thanks to her advice and voice skills. She masters her craft and teaches what nobody else does"
Aicha B.
"Karen Strassman is an extraordinary accent reduction and dialect coach! Whenever I have a client or a friend who needs either of these services Karen is the first person I send them to. This area can bring up anxiety for people and one of the things that I adore the most about Karen and her approach is how compassionate, loving and gentle she is as she imparts her brilliance."
"Karen is truly phenomenal and far beyond a typical voice coach for reasons you can only understand when working with her. For me, her superpower is using various ways to communicate her points so that it resonates with you. A true coach! Beyond mastering the American sounds she's taught me how to breathe and 'be' as an American when playing a character too. Her patience, commitment and flexibility are more than you could ask. Honestly, love this woman! Thanks so much, Karen!"
Katrina Nare
"Working with Karen was eye-opening. She showed me how to access dialects using placement and cadence so that it wasn't so much work to maintain the dialect -- it was coming from an organic place. I'd previously been faking a Standard British dialect (I'd even previously booked a job with it), but once I worked with Karen on it, I realized that I could let go of the "work" in creating it and be more present and authentic as an actress while maintaining a consistent and accurate dialect. She is a pleasure to work with and I'm amazed at how quickly I'm able to learn a new dialect when I work with her. I've used dialect tapes in the past and tried various apps, but working with Karen made it so much easier to learn a dialect and also learn it correctly. Besides being easy to work with and great at what she does, she's also a kind, supportive person which makes the whole experience really enjoyable."
April Sugarman, Actress
"Karen Strassman has been coaching my teenaged-daughter for years. Karen's patience, keen eye, and expertise always culminates in fresh and exciting performances and great auditions."
Tracy (mother of Teen Actress)
"Enthusiastic, patient and positive by nature, Karen understands the path of a creative mind. The fact that she is a talented actress and voice actress add to her skills as a dialect coach. Most importantly Karen speaks French, and for me, having somebody who speaks and understands my own language makes a huge difference. Her support helps me to progress on my way to find my American voice. Karen gives me the confidence and tools to go further in my voice-over career."
Sylvain Latendresse, Voice Actor
"Karen Strassman takes all the stress out of learning dialects. She has you in no time with a new sound coming out of your mouth. It’s fun and exciting. I started by working on a Bronx accent and people literally thought I was from there. Looking forward to the next dialect session with Karen (a definite confidence builder in your work)."
Eden Young
"Working with Karen, for me, has been both a joy & a blessing. When I’ve been stuck in the particulars of an accent, she has helped me find a way through the block almost effortlessly, using both her well-honed intuition and technical expertise to skillfully figure out exactly what key will unlock the problem for me personally. She has worked with me to develop fully rounded characters in a variety of accents, helping me discover who they are THROUGH the accent, which is always a revelation! As well as being a master at what she does technically, Karen is also full of joy & fun, and brings the spirit of play to each session. She truly BELIEVES in you, which in turn helps you believe in yourself, and negates a lot of the anxiety & worry that we sometimes bring into our work. I cannot recommend her coaching highly enough - I am a better, and more successful, actor & human as a result of it."
Francesca Manzi
"Karen has been so amazing working with my now 13 year old daughter. We live in Mexico City so sometimes her american accent gets thrown off. Karen helped her in just a few sessions and she got a starting roll in a film. She also helped her on her British accent when she got a few callbacks! I can not speak highly enough of Karen’s professionalism and amazing skills. She is the best dialect coach there is!"
Greta (mother of Teen Actress)
"Karen is an amazing dialect coach, she has a very individualistic approach directed towards each student. She steers away from making the whole process feel like an exercise or a drill and makes it much more fun instead. She explains things in a very personalized yet simple manner, which gives you confidence to really trust yourself with the work you’re doing. Something that is unique about her is how she explains the expression of a specific dialect rather than focusing on just the sounds used in that dialect which makes it much easier to get the dialect in the body while acting."
Mohit Shrivastava
"Karen helped me overcome so many challenges I had with my accent, voice, and breathing technique! She's patient, caring, warm and very creative. She has a unique ability to find ways to show you what to do where it makes sense to you and it really sticks. With Karen's help, I was able to book several acting gigs, a speaking gig where I spoke in front of over 600 people, and so much more. I feel more confident, radiant and more powerful on camera and on stage because of the work we did together. Thank you, Karen!
Esther Kiss
"As a French native actor trying to make it in Hollywood, it’s very hard to find someone that understands the difficulty to neutralize our “Inspector Clouzot/Pepe le Pew” ish accent in English. Karen was “that” someone, her background speaks for itself; she’s been the voice of many and the coach of many more including me. She knows French as she speaks it fluently and can be more French then any French person I met before. So when I say she understands French, I mean that she’s got this intrinsic knowledge of French that helps her to identify the mistakes we make when speaking English and to tune them down to the point they become unnoticeable. She’s been referred to me by another thespian friend of a friend that spoke English without an ounce of French in it. I asked what her secret was…. Karen was that well kept secret.
Even though quit simple, her methodology is very powerful. There’s nothing that youtubers videos can teach you compared to Karen’s face to face approach and guidance. For me, it proved to be quickly effective. Today, no one can tell I was born in France and lived there most of my life. Pretty awesome! Without spoiling it too much, this isn’t about how you say or pronounce it; it is how your muscles (face, tongue and throat), breathing, body and behavioral gestures say it. This is a gymnastic, this is a workout, an act, you will sweat and struggle, but drink a lot of water and fully commit to it, you will not be disappointed. In addition to be a great voice coach, Karen helped me to prepare auditions and roles, gave me great career advice, Industry tips and many more useful hints that every actor should know."
Bertrand-Xavier Corbi
BIO
Karen Strassman is an actress, voice-over artist and acting/voiceover/dialect coach, known the world over for hundreds of characters she has created in many forms. Whether on-camera or behind a mic, Karen is extremely versatile.
Recently seen guest-starring opposite David Arquette in the new CREEPSHOW, plays recurring characters: D.D.A. Laura Tribe in BOSCH, devious German scientist Dr. Lois Slotnick in PREACHER, cutthroat Hooli Lead Lawyer in SILICON VALLEY. She has played roles as varied as the brilliant and empathic scientist Devra Bogdanovich in INGRESS, a dying immigrant from Northern Ireland, doctors and lawyers, the quirky bookish OCD accountant on WEEDS, to a killer’s trailer trash mother on CRIMINAL MINDS. Upcoming roles include an appearance on PENNY DREADFUL, HOMECOMING, GONE HOLLYWOOD and a lead in the long awaited release of Director Tom Six’s highly anticipated daring movie, THE ONANIA CLUB. Recent onstage appearances include THE BASIC TRAINING OF PAVLO HUMMEL opposite Al Pacino and a lead in the new play SLAP, KISS, KILL, headed for the Hollywood Fringe Festival in 2020.
Karen has worked in nearly every aspect of the VO industry in the last three decades: radio and TV commercials, animation, narration, documentaries, promos, audio books, celebrity voice - matching and voice replacement, internet media, video games, talking toys, dubbing, looping, ADR… Her range of characters spans the voiceover world of cartoons, animation and video games; from the teenage rockstar Catty Noire on MONSTER HIGH, the beloved little girl Olivia on LEGO FRIENDS, sexy Rouge the Bat in SONIC THE HEDGEHOG, Chromie, the charismatic gnome that turns into a dragon from WORLD OF WARCRAFT and HEROES OF THE STORM, to the iconic Mileena & Kitana in MORTAL KOMBAT & the wildly aggressive Poison in STREET FIGHTER. And then there are projects like LEAGUE OF LEGENDS, where she plays five roles, fifteen roles in FINAL FANTASY and the Nicktoons series, MONSUNO, voiced by an ensemble cast of five actors, where Karen not only played the teenage female lead, Jinja, but she also voiced every other female character in all three seasons of the show (last count there were 26 characters). Karen also does a lot of motion capture work including two recent iconic roles: the overburdened French military mechanic Maria Laurent in WOLFENSTEIN II and the disturbed doctor Annette Birkin in the new RESIDENT EVIL 2, she is known for creating unique and powerful characters.
With American/French dual nationality, Karen has spent almost half her life in France and is fluent in French (although she's also worked in German, Spanish, Danish, Italian and Yucatec!). In France, Karen studied acting at the prestigious Conservatoire National Superieur d’Art Dramatique in Paris, and also began her dialect coaching career there, teaching classes at the well-known STUDIO VO/VF and coaching famous French actors in their homes and on-set. As one of the leading v.o. talents in Paris for many years, Karen could be heard as the voice for Air France, Euro - star, Disneyland Paris and for audio tours of the Louvre and the Musée d'Orsay, among many other things... Not only is she fluent in French, but being a dialect coach, Karen performs a wide range of accents. A few years ago she did a European campaign for Lancôme with a British accent, actually beating out real Brits for the job. Karen loves to sink her teeth into all kinds of dialects; Slovic vampires, Russian spies, German commanders, an ancient “Nordic Wraith”, South African lawyer, grandmothers from all corners of the world including from Alabama, China & Rwanda, a male Mayan dwarf chanting in Yucatec... are all fair game.
Outside of acting, Karen also casts & directs for voiceover projects, and continues to share her expertise as a dialect, voiceover & acting coach. She coaches actors privately worldwide as well as teaching voiceover and dialect workshops around the country and online. She recently been coaching on shows such as CASTLE ROCK, BARKSKINS, and JACK RYAN and loves empowering actors to craft the best character for every project.
Karen’s major clients have included: Disney, HBO, Sony, Universal Pictures, Warner Brothers, Microsoft, Nickelodeon, Nicktoons, Cartoon Network, Sci-Fi, Showtime, The CW, CBS, Hulu, Amazon Prime, AMC, Netflix, Klasky-Csupo, Viacom, THQ, Bandai, Atlus, Volition, Namco, Pioneer, Konami, Vivendi, VU Games, Square Enix Co, Blizzard, Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, Technicolor, Disneyland, Lancôme, L'Oréal, Clarins, Vidal Sassoon, Acura, Kia, Hallmark, Mattel and Diet Coke.
Some of her favorite voiceover titles include: EVER AFTER HIGH, OK K.O.!, WINX CLUB, LEGO FRIENDS, 3BELOW: TALES OF ARCADIA, MONSTER, BLEACH, RUGRATS: ALL GROWED UP, STARCRAFT 2, WORLD OF WARCRAFT, ENDWAR, FINAL FANTASY, FALLOUT, PLAYMOBIL: THE MOVIE, EVERQUEST, FIRE EMBLEM, SILENT HILL, PERSONA, HEARTHSTONE, THE MUPPET MOVIE, BIOSHOCK 2, MONSTER HUNTER, CASTLEVANIA, ENCHANTIMALS, SHANTAE, RUMBLE ROSES, LEAGUE OF LEGENDS, MORTAL KOMBAT, CODE GEASS, SABOTEUR, STAR WARS: THE OLD REPUBLIC, TONY HAWK, VALKYRIA, STREET FIGHTER X TEKKEN, HELSING, DEAD OR ALIVE, GHOST IN THE SHELL, HUNTERXHUNTER, THE SONIC GAMES, ZERO ESCAPE, LEGO DIMENSIONS, D.C. SUPERHERO GIRLS, DIABLO, RESIDENT EVIL 1 & 2.