@a!: How is it playing a character that's so different from you? Spike: Shinji's annoying--come on, let's get real! But an actor has to be available to all sides of their personality. There's parts of Shinji that are inside me, there's parts of anything you do that are inside you. Everybody is so multifaceted; actors just have access to those facets. And doing Shinji, sometimes it gets to be fun. There was a scene in one of the episodes where I get to be a little wacky--he's doing something stupid and I get to play around with that. I have the most fun when I do little secret parts where people don't know who I am. In one scene he's watching a movie and I'm the German doctor in the movie--you can't see me, it's just this voice, "Nein, we can't do this!" So I'm sitting there watching myself, and I'm talking to myself--it's trite, but I find it funny. I try to loosen stuff up whenever we get a chance, but with "Eva," you've really got to stick to the text. Other ones, we get to play with. Sometimes there's even no lines and I'll throw something in--"Right here would be a good place to put this line. Can I?" "Sure, throw it out there." Just try it, see if it sticks. @a!: Have you brought anything to Shinji that wasn't there before? Spike: It's very hard to tell, the way the Japanese do it, but I think we've brought him up a notch, personally; I think we made him more emotional. I don't want to say anything against the Japanese, because they do a fabulous job, but I think that Americans overall are much more in touch with their emotions anyway and much more freely express them. So we have to make him a little more not-subdued. When somebody's breaking down, they aren't be going, [in a meek voice] "Oh, man, this sucks." That's not breaking down, y'know? So you've really got to fire it up a little bit, and I think it shows. Some people don't like the way we did it, and they can bite us. We worked very hard, and we stand behind it. If I didn't stand behind my work, I would... not stand behind my work! @a!: Do you feel proprietary at all about Shinji? Do explicit doujinshi with the character bother you? Spike: Not a bit. They can do what they want to; I just do the voice. I try to make it as believable, as good, as I possibly can, and truthful. But, face it, we're actors. I mean, seriously, that's one thing that really gets me. Somebody called me "Shinji" earlier, and I'm like, "Hellooooo, reality dose!" This is me, this is not Shinji. People have a hard time discerning between the two, and when they do, it frightens me! But sometimes it's just maturity, sometimes it's just--I won't say hero worship, because I'm not, but like, Swartzenegger or Bruce Willis, or any action star they see, people are like, oh yeah, they know him. They don't know me. Nobody knows who I am. They know Shinji's character, or they know a character that some action figure plays. They don't know the actor. In my case with Shinji, I am totally the polar opposite. And people don't quite understand that we're actors and we do this because we're good at what we do, we do something all the way. I respect the character of Shinji; I try not to mess it up. Any character I do, I try to really make it well-rounded and fun. Most of all, it's got to be fun. That's why I guess Shinji is more trying, because he doesn't have much fun. He needs to loosen up. He needs to get laid! Everybody thinks the same thing--"He needs to get laid!" @a!: Is it hard to switch gears in acting different characters in a close time-frame? Spike: Nah. I can switch gears like that [snaps fingers]. You've seen Amanda and me and Matt, we're nuts, and it helps to be insane a little bit to do what we do; we can turn it on and off like a switch. Another thing is, I don't think I've worked two days in a row yet. "Eva" has been great. We would do like three episodes in one shot, and then we wouldn't do anything for another month, and then another three episodes. Sometimes it was a month, sometimes it was a month and a half. We had 12 sessions, I think. It got easier and easier as we went on. At first it was just hard, especially some of the first episodes, just screaming and screaming! "I signed up for this? What the crap...?" @a!: Any advice for aspiring voice actors? Spike: Practice, practice, practice! I wish I'd started when I was younger. If you've got the bug, try it. The main thing is, if you're going to do anime voice-acting, you need to do a voice tape, or find out where they're having auditions and go and read for a part. Audition for an anime company. You'll want to put a tape together. Any actor will have those tapes; if they don't, they're fakin' you. You've got to have voice tapes. For anime, you really learn how to dub. It's not easy; there's a skill to it. For example, I did some dubbing on [the USA Network live-action series] "The Big Easy" [in which he appeared in two episodes], and that's the hardest dubbing I've ever had to do in my life, dubbing yourself doing stuff up there. Dubbing cartoon characters, it's mostly flaps. But when you're dubbing yourself, you've got to match your own voice and you don't know what the heck you did, especially when half of it was improv! But it's a skill like anything else; you get better and better as you try it. Get a tape about two minutes long; some places will have scripts that you can do different voices on, and then having an agent wouldn't be bad. But as far as anime goes, you may not need an agent. Texas is a right-to-work state, I didn't need an agent, I just go and negotiate it all, we do it ourselves. But in L.A. you've got to have an agent if you want to do an anime or anything. You can probably still do some low-budget stuff, but you may not get paid at all. You want to try to be good. If you think you're good, you may not be. I think I'm good but I'm not great, there are so many people better than me, and I can always do better. I think when somebody gets all cocky, "Oh yeah, I'm so good," it's "Okay, let's hear your tape"--"What tape?" There are people like that. I've taught voice acting before, and there are some people that have it, there's some people that don't. There's some people that will never have it; it does not matter what you do, they will not have it. Try a different medium. Voice acting is just like any other acting; it's an art. There's great and there's bad, and everybody's somewhere in between. I think the trick is to know if you're really, really putrid, to know that and run. But I encourage anyone to try it, give it a shot.