Guest Teacher Friday with Agent Venessa Gilbert

Vanessa Gilbert – RSA TALENT

Vanessa Gilbert has been a name synonymous with voiceover in Los Angeles for the past 30 years.

A native Angeleno, Vanessa grew up around show business. After attending Agoura High, Vanessa left home and traveled throughout Europe, spending time in England during the height of Glam Rock in the seventies. Among many adventures, she met and formed a lifelong friendship with Led Zepplin lead singer, Robert Plant. In 1977, Vanessa returned to California and attended Sawyer Business College, leaving behind a Rock & Roll lifestyle to learn number crunching and business theory. Introduced into the voiceover business by the legendary Don Pitts, Vanessa started as an assistant at the prestigious talent agency, Abrams Rubaloff. Vanessa then segued to casting, working at The Voicecaster in 1980.There she was exposed to the inner workings of the casting process and acquired a thorough knowledge of actors, commercial houses, and studios throughout Los Angeles. She became known for her “ear,” and her ability to draw out superior performances from actors. From 1981 to 1988, Vanessa was tapped as the head of the voiceover department at Talent Group where she added strategy and talent management to her resumé.

Between the years 1988 to 1991 Vanessa served as founder and head of ACES (American Creative Entertainment Services). Her client roster included Michael J. Stull and Christopher Cary.

In 1991, Vanessa joined forces with Steve Tisherman at the Tisherman Agency where she developed promo and trailer talent just as movie marketing trailers were blooming into the multi-million-dollar business it is today. Together they built a stellar roster and cultivated some of the most premiere voices in the industry such as Don LaFontaine and George DelHoyo. In 2005 Tisherman became TGMD when Vanessa and partners Kevin Motley and Ilko Drozdoski took over. She was their co-owner and President until 2017.

Always ready for new challenges, in 2020 Vanessa joined forces with Gina Nuccio of RSA TALENT MANAGEMENT in Burbank, CA., where she happily represents the best of the best voiceover has to offer.

Vanessa is a proud voting member of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, Women In Animation, and a founding member of the Don LaFontaine Voiceover Lab Advisory Board at SAG-AFTRA.

“Voiceover moves quickly, it’s the purest form of art, the purest form of acting. You have to harness your heart and your brain and channel it through your voice, reducing big concepts down to their emotional essence. I love the process.”

 – Vanessa Gilbert