Meet Lakira Porter

Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Lakira Porter. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

LaKira, we’re thrilled to have you sharing your thoughts and lessons with our community. So, for folks who are at a stage in their life or career where they are trying to be more resilient, can you share where you get your resilience from?

I get my resilience from parents. They always taught me to persevere and to keep reaching for my goals. They also taught me that it is okay to rely on them and my family when I think can’t move forward. Even after the loss of my mom back in 2017, I still hold her and my dad’s teachings close to my heart. I will never falter as long as I have my support system and my dreams to keep me going.

Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?

Well, I’m a professional voice actor, Singer (hobbyist) and overall creative mind! I am a lover of cartoons and animation, so I of course fell for the act of creating characters and bringing art to life! As a voice actor I specialize in many areas of voice acting like animation, video games, narration, and commercials. I prefer to book voice overs for animation the most, especially in the indie realm of animation, because of my youthful, flexible, and wacky voice range (my variety of boy voices is not to be taken lightly either, and I also do accents).

I get really pumped to voice in animated projects because of this fact! Not only that there’s always talented artists looking for actors with range for their indie projects. Their creative minds always gets me super excited to audition and just learn more about the shows they’re making. I’m truly honored to get to be a part of so many. Stay tuned, I have lot’s of cool things coming. I paved a way for myself by just enjoying animation online and sharing that love with my friends & peers. Those real connections I made online led to people talking, and then they seek me out for projects. And I of course do a lot of auditioning too, that’s how it all began.

Some projects you can catch me in now are Animation Station, an indie animation talk show. I’m the host, Millie Martins, of a show where we spotlight talented minds in the indie animation world, episode 1 is available now on Youtube. The found family series Epilogue of Endings by Rainbott, I voice one of the protagonist, Lucy. The 11 minute pilot was created in 3 months by SCAD and high school students! It can be viewed on YouTube. The Annecy Film Festival selected indie film, The World’s Divide. Which was animated, directed, and written by one person, Denver Jackson. Lastly, some more “mainstream” projects Magic Mixies based on the toy brand by Moose Toys, Crayola Crew, Lil Wild and more are coming soon.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

I’d say willingness to learn/accept direction, be able to accept rejection, and joy. During my journey both then and now, I took all of these things in mind. In order to become a great performer you must be very open to learning everything especially as a newcomer to voice acting. A huge misconception that people have is believing that all you need is a nice sounding voice or funny voices, but that’s wrong. There’s so many factors that come into play in order to be a good voice actor-one being you need to know how to act first. But I digress, Rejection is another thing actors have to get used to. 95% of the job is auditioning and the other 5% is the actual ‘work the gig’ part. Use it as a way to get better each time. And lastly, joy, have fun with the process! It’s not a quick journey so I do my best to have fun and newcomers should do so too.

Awesome, really appreciate you opening up with us today and before we close maybe you can share a book recommendation with us. Has there been a book that’s been impactful in your growth and development?

One book that comes to mind is, “Voice Lessons: How a Couple of Ninja Turtles, Pinky, and an Animaniac Saved My Life” by Rob Paulsen and Michael Fleeman. The book is about Rob Paulsen, the famous voice actor, known for Raphael from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987), Donatello from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012), Pinky and Yakko from Animaniacs and more! He gives his life story from how he got his start to his brave battle with Stage 3 throat cancer. I highly recommend reading it if you have an interest in voice acting! It inspired me alot. Mr. Paulsen is my favorite voice actor, his performance in any show always captivates me. One thing that stuck that he says is “Laughter is the best medicine, and the cool thing is, you can’t OD and the refills are free”, so I choose to lead by his example. Using my talent to bring joy into the life of many.

Contact Info:

Image Credits

Headshots by Curtis Burris-White

Character Role Headshot edited by LaKira Porter

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