Voice actors and dubbing directors occupy different sides of the same recording session. One performer is concentrating on a particular character, while the director has to consider how that performance fits the script, the picture, the rest of the cast and the production as a whole. Yet dubbing has a long history of performers eventually taking on both responsibilities, sometimes continuing to act while directing other actors through their own roles.
That crossover makes sense because experienced dubbing actors already understand many of the unusual demands of the work. They know what it feels like to follow timing cues while watching a completed performance, adjust dialogue to fixed mouth movements and produce an emotional reading within a narrow recording window. Moving into direction, however, requires them to expand that perspective considerably. Instead of worrying about one character, they become responsible for helping an entire localized production work.
Learning Dubbing From the Actor’s Side of the Session
An experienced dubbing actor enters directing with practical knowledge that would otherwise have to be learned from outside the performance. They have heard three-beep cues, worked through individual loops, repeated lines to correct synchronization and discovered that an adapted sentence that appears comfortable on paper can become unexpectedly difficult when performed against picture. They have also experienced many different styles of direction and learned which kinds of notes help them make an immediate adjustment.
That experience can be valuable when something goes wrong in a session. If an actor repeatedly struggles to fit a line into the available time, someone who has performed dubbing themselves may recognize that the problem is not necessarily the actor. The adapted dialogue might contain too many syllables, an awkward combination of sounds or a pause that cannot comfortably coexist with the required performance. Acting experience gives the director another perspective from which to diagnose the problem before simply asking for the same line again.
It can also influence how performance notes are communicated. Actors generally need something they can actually play rather than only being told that a take was incorrect. Information about what a character wants, how they feel about the person they are addressing or what they are attempting to hide can produce a more useful adjustment than a vague request for greater intensity. Actor-directors have spent years receiving those notes themselves, giving them firsthand experience of what it feels like to translate a director’s words into a performance.
The Director Has to Think Beyond One Character
The biggest change comes from the scale of the responsibility. An actor can concentrate primarily on understanding one character and the scenes in which that character appears. A director has to understand everyone. They need to know how characters relate to each other, where emotional arcs are going and how performances recorded at different times will eventually sound together.
Caitlin Glass, whose career spans both voice acting and ADR direction, has described this distinction directly. As an actor, she can concentrate on the character she has been hired to perform. As a director, she needs to know the entire production. That broader understanding can require extensive preparation because a seemingly minor choice in an early episode may depend on information revealed much later.
The job also extends beyond acting. Directors encounter pronunciation decisions, synchronization problems, adapted dialogue, casting questions, continuity and technical restrictions throughout the recording process. They work alongside writers, engineers and production staff while making decisions quickly enough to keep sessions moving. An actor entering direction therefore brings useful experience but also takes on responsibilities that performing alone does not provide.
Mike McFarland Worked on Both Sides of Major Anime Dubs
Mike McFarland’s career demonstrated how closely acting and directing could coexist within English-language anime dubbing. As a performer, he became associated with characters including Master Roshi and Yajirobe in the Dragon Ball franchise, Buggy in One Piece, Jean Havoc in Fullmetal Alchemist and Jean Kirstein in Attack on Titan. At the same time, his work behind the performances became an equally significant part of his career.
McFarland’s ADR directing credits included major English-language anime productions such as Fullmetal Alchemist, Attack on Titan and Tokyo Ghoul, among many others. His work placed him in the unusual position of understanding dubbing both as the person trying to deliver an individual character and as the person responsible for guiding a cast through the complete localized production.
In interviews about directing, McFarland emphasized that an English adaptation needed to communicate the story effectively rather than merely replace Japanese dialogue with English words. He also spoke about becoming increasingly attentive to synchronization as his career developed. One particularly revealing example came from the original Fullmetal Alchemist, where Aaron Dismuke was still very young while performing Alphonse Elric. McFarland described using imaginative and sometimes physical references to help the young actor reach the emotional state a scene required, demonstrating that directing could involve finding a language of communication suited specifically to the performer rather than relying on the same instruction for everyone.
Caitlin Glass Approaches the Production as an Actor and Director
Glass provides another example of a career that developed simultaneously in front of and behind the dubbing process. Her acting credits include Winry Rockbell in Fullmetal Alchemist and Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, Mina Ashido in My Hero Academia and numerous other anime roles. Her ADR directing career has likewise covered a substantial range of productions, including more recent high-profile work such as Solo Leveling.
Her discussions of directing illustrate how acting knowledge intersects with the larger responsibilities of the job. Glass has emphasized the importance of knowing the entire story rather than approaching episodes as isolated collections of lines. That knowledge allows the director to provide information actors may not have, particularly when performers record separately or when the importance of a scene depends on developments elsewhere in the story.
Solo Leveling also provides a useful example of collaboration between acting, writing and direction. Adaptive writer Jessica Sluys prepared English dialogue to fit the animation, but lines could continue to change during recording when they proved awkward or did not sound natural for a character. Sung Jinwoo actor Aleks Le could raise concerns about phrasing, while Glass could evaluate alternatives against the picture. A director who has spent considerable time acting in dubbed productions understands from personal experience why dialogue that technically fits may still be uncomfortable to perform.
Patrick Seitz Moves Between Acting, Writing and Direction
Patrick Seitz adds another dimension because his dubbing career has included acting, ADR direction and script adaptation. As an actor, his extensive credits include characters such as Endeavor in My Hero Academia, Dio Brando in JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure and Franky in One Piece. His work behind the scenes has given him experience with the same localized dialogue from several different positions.
His preparation for Monster offers a particularly clear illustration of how directing differs from performing a single character. Before directing the English version, Seitz watched the entire 74-episode series over a concentrated period so he would understand where its characters and story were heading. That knowledge mattered because early performances could contain implications that only become clear much later. The director needed information beyond what an actor encountering one recording cue might reasonably possess.
Script adaptation adds another useful layer to that perspective. Seitz has discussed the advantage of directing material he has also adapted because he understands why particular words were chosen in the first place. If the line fails when an actor performs it, he knows which elements are essential and where there may be room to make an adjustment. The writer, director and performer still represent different jobs, but experience across all three can make the relationship between them unusually visible.
Acting Experience Can Change the Way Direction Is Given
Every performer responds differently to direction. One actor may immediately understand an emotional explanation, while another may benefit from a physical comparison or a simpler description of the character’s objective. Some performers want extensive context before a take, while others work better with a concise adjustment and another attempt. Directors have to learn how to communicate with the individual rather than expecting every actor to respond identically.
Having been directed themselves gives actor-directors a large collection of experiences to draw from. They know what it is like to receive a note that immediately unlocks a scene and what it is like to receive one that creates more confusion. They also understand the concentration required to watch the picture, anticipate timing, read adapted dialogue and act simultaneously. A director can still demand precision, but firsthand experience can help determine whether the performer needs another acting note, a timing adjustment or simply a more workable line.
That shared experience can also make collaboration easier. An actor suggesting a different reading or questioning a phrase is not necessarily resisting direction. They may have discovered something about the line through the physical act of performing it. A director with acting experience is well positioned to understand that distinction while still deciding whether the proposed change serves the larger production.
Being a Good Actor Does Not Automatically Make Someone a Good Director
The overlap between the professions should not obscure their differences. Acting experience provides useful knowledge, but directing requires skills that performers may never need when concentrating solely on their own roles. A director has to manage time, communicate with many different personalities, maintain continuity across the cast and make decisions that serve the entire production rather than any single performance.
There is also a change in perspective. An actor can reasonably concentrate on making their own scene as strong as possible. The director sometimes has to accept a performance that is less individually striking because it better supports the surrounding characters or remains closer to the original production. They must know when another take is worth the recording time and when continued adjustments are unlikely to improve the finished scene.
Some performers consequently have little interest in directing, while others discover that they enjoy shaping the larger production. The career transition is not simply a promotion from actor to director. They are separate creative disciplines, and many people continue doing both rather than abandoning one for the other.
Sometimes Directors Still Have to Direct Themselves
The separation becomes particularly interesting when a dubbing director also appears in the cast they are directing. This is not unusual in an industry where many directors maintain active acting careers. A director may take a supporting role, provide incidental voices or continue performing an established character while overseeing the rest of the production.
Directing yourself removes one of the usual relationships in the session. There is no separate director listening exclusively to the performance and offering notes, so actor-directors may rely more heavily on playback, the engineer and other members of the production team to evaluate their own takes. Smaller roles make that arrangement easier, while playing a major character in a production one is also directing can require considerably more attention.
The situation captures what makes actor-directors distinctive within dubbing. They can move from thinking about an entire cast to concentrating on a few seconds of one character, then immediately return to evaluating the production as a whole.
Seeing a Dub From Both Sides of the Session
Voice actors experience dubbing at its most immediate level. They see a character on screen, hear the cue and have a few seconds to make adapted dialogue feel like a natural part of an existing performance. Directors have to understand that same moment while also considering everything surrounding it: the other actors, the script, synchronization, continuity and the story that those individual recordings will eventually create.
Acting experience cannot provide every skill required to direct, but it gives performers who make the transition an unusually practical foundation. Mike McFarland, Caitlin Glass and Patrick Seitz built careers that crossed those boundaries in different ways, demonstrating how acting, writing and directing can inform one another without becoming the same job.
For an actor who moves into dubbing direction, the perspective ultimately changes from performing one piece of the production to understanding how all of those pieces fit together. They already know what it feels like to stand on the actor’s side of the session. The challenge is learning to listen from the other side as well.