Lili Wexu: From Montreal to Los Angeles, Passing on an Entire Craft

Some people teach us without ever having been our teachers. Lili Wexu is one of those people for me.

I have never taken one of her classes or worked with her as a coach. Over the past few years, however, we have exchanged a few messages on social media. We even had a Zoom conversation several years ago about the kinds of content that might be useful to actors. I no longer remember the context clearly enough to reconstruct it any further—and I would rather admit that than manufacture clarity where time has done its work.

Most of my relationship with her teaching developed in other ways: through her posts, through more than fifty newsletters I have kept since 2023 and, above all, through reading her Get Clever About Voice Acting & Announcing series. This article is therefore not the testimony of a student who shared her classroom. It is the record of real learning that happened largely at a distance. It is my way of acknowledging what an artist can pass on when she takes the time to make her profession more legible to others.

And in Lili’s case, that profession is vast. It begins with acting, moves through microphones, acoustics and editing, then extends into rates, contracts, client relationships, marketing, search visibility and the patient construction of a career.

A Story That Begins in Montreal

Before Los Angeles, there was Montreal.

Lili says so herself in an article about the beginning of her voice-acting career: it all started here, in this bilingual city where French and English meet without always understanding one another perfectly. Her professional profile on Actors Access also describes her as being from Montreal and raised in the city.

In the late 1990s, a radio controversy led Mix 96 to make a greater effort to reach French-speaking listeners. Lili, then a young bilingual actor, was brought in to translate and record French liners. She discovered the microphone, did take after take and fell in love with the process. The independent Sound Off Podcast also traces those Montreal beginnings and the decisive role of Rob Wreford, a broadcaster and voice artist who took her under his wing.

That origin is more than a pleasant biographical detail to slip into a profile. It helps explain what she went on to become. Her bilingualism opened doors; moving from Quebec to the United States taught her to navigate several professional cultures; and her career required her to understand very different systems, from UDA and ACTRA to SAG-AFTRA and the American market.

Her path eventually expanded across voice work, film, television, animation, video games and live announcing at major events. Her credits include Grey’s Anatomy, American Crime Story, Assassin’s Creed and the ceremonies of the 2010 Winter Olympics. What interests me most, however, is not the accumulation of credits. It is what she has done with all that experience.

From Mentee to Mentor

In the acknowledgements of her books, Lili returns to Rob Wreford. She recounts how he taught her what it meant to be an independent voice artist, at a time when information travelled less freely and many aspects of the profession were still learned in the shadows of a studio—through observation, trial and error.

Years later, her books seem to extend that gesture of mentorship.

A good manual obviously cannot replace a human encounter. It can, however, become a kind of slow-motion mentor: someone has taken the time to name what they do, organize their experience, point out the traps and leave the reader enough signposts to move forward without having to discover everything alone.

The first volume is dedicated to aspiring voice actors and announcers who often walk alone in the pursuit of their dreams. That idea runs through the entire Get Clever About VO project. Lili is not simply trying to teach people how to interpret copy; she is reducing the number of things artists are condemned to learn the hard way.

The First Lesson: Voice Is Not the Starting Point

The most important sentence in the entire series appears almost discreetly in the acknowledgements to the first volume. Lili credits actor and coach Jeannie Elias with teaching her the fundamental lesson of her career:

“Acting is the true foundation of all voice work.”
— Lili Wexu, Get Clever About Voice Acting & Announcing, Part I: Becoming an Artist, 3rd edition, 2023

As an actor who has worked extensively through the body—in theatre, corporeal mime, Butoh, improvisation and on camera—that idea resonates deeply with me. A voice does not float in a vacuum. It comes from a body, a breath, an imagination, a history and a relationship with someone, even when that someone must be invented in front of a microphone.

A person can have a magnificent voice and say nothing. Someone else can have a less spectacular instrument, but think with such precision, speak from such a clear need and hold such a vivid point of view that listening becomes immediate.

This is where Lili shifts the question. Instead of asking, “How should I say this line?” she keeps bringing us back to a more fruitful question: “Why am I saying it?” Who am I speaking to? What am I trying to get? Why does this product, idea or story matter to me right now?

The distinction may sound simple. It is not. Asking how easily pushes an actor toward manufacturing a sound, imitating an advertisement or demonstrating an emotion. Asking why requires the actor to create circumstances, a relationship and human behaviour.

In her newsletters, Lili often returns to the difference between a performative read and a grounded one. The first displays the result it wants to produce. The second pursues something. Emotion is no longer an effect we force; it becomes the consequence of an action.

Her former student Barb Lyon describes this approach very well in a long interview published in 2026. Lili explains that a compelling read makes us feel that the words genuinely mean something to the person speaking them. The copy is no longer recited attractively; it is supported by an experience, a point of view or an emotion.

That may be the best definition of “conversational,” a word that now appears in nearly every commercial direction. It does not mean speaking more weakly or swallowing the ends of sentences to sound natural. It means actually thinking what you are saying.

Reading the Text Instead of Guessing What Casting Wants

Another lesson returns insistently throughout the books and newsletters: the text contains far more information than we think it does.

Lili suggests grouping ideas, observing shifts in energy and noticing unusual words, repetitions, punctuation and contradictions. She also asks the actor to consider why the writer constructed the copy this way and what it is truly meant to provoke in the audience.

In a recent newsletter, she writes about the spirit of the copy: the heart of the text, the central idea that sometimes reveals itself through recurring words or concepts. I like that expression very much. It does not reduce analysis to an intellectual exercise. It searches for the spirit running through the writing.

This connects with a belief that has grown stronger through my own training: trying to guess the “right way” to play a scene is often less useful than digging into what is already there. The more I work, the less I believe in a single correct answer hidden somewhere inside a casting director’s head. I would rather arrive with a choice that is constructed, personal and alive enough to be redirected.

Lili also insists on a very practical point: when two takes are requested, they should offer two genuine choices. Not the same read with a slight change in speed. Two takes, two possibilities.

The Artist, the Technician and the Entrepreneur

The great strength of the three Voice Acting & Announcing volumes is that they do not divide the profession artificially. Instead, they follow the voice artist’s actual progression.

First, one must become an actor: train, know the instrument, understand auditions, learn to engage an audience and think about a career over the long term.

Then one must become a technician: build a recording space, understand acoustics, choose equipment, record cleanly, edit, name and deliver files, follow specifications and protect the archives.

Finally, one must become an entrepreneur: establish rates, understand usage, invoice, write policies, protect one’s rights, build a brand, maintain a website, make the work discoverable and develop a business that does not depend entirely on the next audition arriving.

The second volume does something valuable: it demystifies technology without turning it into an equipment competition.

“Handling audio is a very learnable skill and any problem you encounter is usually solvable.”
— Lili Wexu, Part II: Recording & Editing Voiceovers, 3rd edition, 2023

I like this sentence because it puts technology in its proper place. It is neither magic nor secondary. It is a set of skills to acquire and processes to make reliable.

My other profession, in aviation, probably makes me especially receptive to this aspect of her teaching. In a technical environment, talent or goodwill cannot replace a clear process. You document, verify, back up, deliver to standards and anticipate what might go wrong. A professional home studio requires a lighter version of that same discipline.

Lili therefore reminds us to retain files, make copies, understand formats and prepare a session before the client comes online. These are not the most romantic aspects of the work, but they often determine whether someone who is pleasant to listen to also becomes a professional who is pleasant to hire.

Business Does Not Betray Art

The third volume may have surprised me even more. It begins with self-respect, then moves through ethics, rates, invoicing, policies, marketing, demos, websites and branding.

“No one has more interest in your business than you do.”
— Lili Wexu, Part III: Running Your Voiceover Business, 3rd edition, 2023

This is not an invitation to control everything or dispense with agents. It is a reminder of autonomy. An agent can open doors, submit a profile and negotiate work. No one else, however, can carry our training, positioning, visibility, client relationships and the coherence of our choices on a daily basis.

For many artists, the words marketing, sales and branding still cause discomfort. We fear turning something alive into a product. That fear is not absurd: a career can easily become a succession of strategies that eventually drain away the reason we wanted to act in the first place.

But having no strategy does not protect the art. It often makes it more dependent.

Lili approaches marketing as a way of becoming findable and understandable. What problem can I solve? In what kinds of projects am I credible? What do my demos communicate? Does my website speak the language of the people looking for a talent like me? Do I depend entirely on my agent, or have I built other paths toward work?

She discusses SEO, direct outreach, YouTube, backlinks, niches and directories. Some of these subjects may seem far removed from acting. Yet they all answer the same question: how can we create enough autonomy to keep practising our art?

That autonomy also includes the ability to say no, protect the use of one’s voice, understand clauses involving artificial intelligence, ask about a campaign’s usage and duration, and calmly explain to a client why that information affects the rate.

Another sentence from the third volume neatly captures that responsibility:

“Markets don’t determine value, people in those markets do.”
— Lili Wexu, Part III: Running Your Voiceover Business, “Setting Rates,” 2023

Everything Acting Schools Do Not Have Time to Teach

The Get Clever About Acting in Los Angeles series broadens this vision even further. Lili recounts that she began collecting her knowledge after meeting a Canadian actor who had arrived in Los Angeles without being sufficiently prepared for the realities of the market.

She did not limit herself to writing about auditions. She documented working as a Canadian actor in Los Angeles, U.S. visas, choosing a lawyer, financial implications, relocating, banking, credit, cars, insurance, housing and the budget required to establish a new home base.

What interests me here is not whether every actor should move to Los Angeles. That would be absurd. It is the conception of the profession these guides reveal: an artistic career never exists on its own. It rests on a legal, financial, technical, human and geographical ecosystem.

Lili also knows how to recognize the limits of her own expertise. On immigration matters, for example, she consults specialists and thanks an attorney for contributing to the guide. That rigour matters. Passing on knowledge does not mean pretending to know everything; it also means knowing where to direct others.

An Active Bridge Between Quebec and Los Angeles

The circle becomes especially satisfying when we look at what Lili is doing today.

A bilingual Montrealer begins her career at a Quebec radio station. She learns the profession from a mentor, builds a career in Canada and then the United States, writes guides to help other Canadians understand the American market and ultimately becomes a resource for productions that want to work properly with Quebec.

In Los Angeles, she now offers French Canadian dialect coaching to actors and productions. She also provides French Canadian casting services, including the search for authentic talent, coordination with Quebec agencies, linguistic consultation and direction during recording sessions.

She is therefore more than a Quebec success story abroad. She acts as a genuine cultural and professional intermediary between two markets.

At a time when accents are sometimes treated as accessories and Quebec French is still too easily confused with international or European French, that role is far from incidental. A language carries a rhythm, a culture and a way of relating to others. Authenticity is not simply a matter of pronouncing the words correctly.

A Teacher Who Remains a Student

What gives me the greatest confidence in Lili’s approach may be the fact that she continues to learn herself.

Her newsletters regularly describe her return to class, workshops with casting directors, books she studies, techniques she tests and adjustments she makes as the market changes. In her interview with Barb Lyon, she acknowledges that teaching is itself a skill she continues to develop. To explain what she does instinctively, she must observe it more carefully, break it down, try it with different students, retain what works and rework the rest.

That humility does not diminish expertise; it makes it credible.

“Real artists never stop learning.”
— Lili Wexu, Part I: Becoming an Artist, “Taking the Long View,” 2023

Her work as an educator also extends beyond her own ecosystem. The National Association of Voice Actors includes in its community class archive a session titled 9 Power Moves with Lili Wexu, presented in September 2025.

Then there are her classes, coaching, demo preparation, community challenges, free private podcast, articles, practice-script generator and various tools for visibility and promotional-material creation.

It would be naive to pretend that all this exists outside any commercial logic. Lili runs a business. She sells books, classes, coaching and services. But she does not conceal that reality; on the contrary, she teaches artists to treat their practice as a professional activity. Some resources are free, others affordable and others require a greater commitment. Together, they form a path people can enter according to their level and needs.

Her content is a showcase, yes. But it is also a workshop.

What I Have Learned from Lili Wexu

After the books, the posts and all those saved newsletters, five ideas remain especially present in the way I think about voice work.

Voice must be driven by acting. Tone, diction and technique matter, but they replace neither a point of view nor the need to speak.

Text analysis liberates more than it constrains. The better I understand what a text is doing, the more risks I can take without losing its intention.

Technology can be learned. A studio, software or audio format may be intimidating, but these are not mysteries reserved for a select few.

Business can protect art. Thoughtful rates, clear policies, an understanding of usage and well-built visibility give an artist more choices, not fewer.

Training never ends. The market changes, our instruments change and our understanding of acting changes with them. Continuing to learn is not an admission that we are unprepared. It is a way of remaining alive in the profession.

Making the Road More Legible

I have never sat in one of Lili Wexu’s classrooms. We have exchanged a few messages and shared that Zoom conversation, but most of what I have learned from her reached me at a distance. That does not make it any less real.

I learned through the consistency of her posts, the way she connects acting to text, her insistence on process, her refusal to separate the artist entirely from the technician or entrepreneur, and her determination to share information that several generations had to acquire in isolation.

I do not know whether one article can do justice to more than twenty-five years of work and everything she has built around it. I do know what I want to honour.

Lili Wexu has not only built a career between Montreal and Los Angeles. She has left signposts along the road.

And for artists who often move forward without a map, that already means a great deal.