J. Michael Collins has been a working voice actor since he was 15.
Thirty years in, he has 50+ industry awards, a career that has reinvented itself multiple times, and the largest voiceover conference in the world running out of Atlanta every spring.
When I had him on The ADNA Presents, the conversation turned out to be two people who have both built careers by moving toward things before the consensus caught up, talking honestly about what that costs and what it earns.
He Answered The First Question In Three Words
I asked J. Michael what he loves about audio description. His answer: it helps people.
That answer tells you whether someone understands what this work is actually for. Audio Description exists because blind audiences deserve to experience the same stories everyone else does, with the same emotional access, the same tension, the same humor, the same stakes. When a performer treats that as a craft problem worth solving, the work gets better. When they treat it as a box to check, it doesn’t.
J. Michael got it immediately, because he is also the person deciding what earns a place at the VO Atlanta table.
Audio Description Is At That Table
VO Atlanta bills itself as the Super Bowl of the voiceover industry. J. Michael describes it as a buffet of everything that makes this business what it is. Audio Description is on that menu now (lots of food analogies in this episode!), because it is becoming one of the more desirable and durable parts of the voiceover world.
There are over 14,000 titles with audio description. That number keeps growing. The demand is structural. And the shortage is performers who understand the craft well enough to do it at the level the work requires.
That gap is exactly what I have spent the last decade working to close.
What risk looks like when you have been doing this long enough
J. Michael was one of the early adopters of online casting when the established voiceover world thought it was a strange move.
He took heat for it, made real money on it, watched the platforms shift, and moved with them. He is now primarily agency-represented again, which is also where he started.
His point: he was willing to move before the consensus formed, and that willingness cost him some goodwill and earned him something more durable.
The parallel to Audio Description is direct. The performers building serious AD careers right now are learning the craft, doing the work, and positioning themselves in a space that is still early enough to matter.
I have been in that space for a long time. The window is open. I don’t see it staying this wide.
What he told our audience at the close
Trust your gut.
Understand the craft.
Work with people who know what they are doing.
And when you put yourself out there, commit.
That is good advice for any part of this industry. In Audio Description, it is also a competitive advantage, because sometimes, people still treat it like an afterthought.
The full conversation is on The ADNA Presents. If you are an industry insider who already knows J. Michael, you know he does not waste words when it counts. This one is worth your time.