Everyone gets their moment to shine with enough patience and hard work. Cowboy Bebop voice actor Steve Blum can say that loudly and clearly. The anime stands as foundational in many ways. Opening the doors for animated projects to be darker, less welcoming for children, and more appropriate for a more mature audience, it also brought about the world of anime to Western culture.
Animation in itself was limited to children alone and for anime grew popularly in such a world where Japanese was sparsely spoken and the media that came with it was even less acknowledged. Cowboy Bebop changed that and thus the direction in which anime was growing by introducing successful dubs. Watching anime with subtitles was common but their dubs only became concrete after the series’ success.
Steve Blum’s Journey Took an Unexpected Turn
Steve Blum may now be known as the famous voice behind Spike Spiegel from Cowboy Bebop but he certainly did not start that way. Speaking with Bleeding Cool, he admitted that his journey into becoming a dedicated voice actor caught him off guard the most. His story started in the mailroom of a small film company.
I was working in the mailroom of a low budget film company, it was called Empire Entertainment, we made movies like ‘Re-Animator,’ ‘Ghoulies,’ ‘The Puppet Master’ movies later. I got a day job working in their mailroom and the head of the mailroom was casting a quote/unquote Japananimation program and was looking for a guy with a deep voice to do creature work, and I happened to have the deepest voice in the mailroom and he asked me if I would be interested in coming into audition on the weekend.
He was simply working in the mailroom with no intention whatsoever to transition his career into that of a voice actor. However, that changed when the head of the mailroom needed someone with a deep voice for a creature. Blum turned out to be the perfect choice and with one audition he found himself hired for the role.
This came out of nowhere and had he known earlier, things would have been much different. Instead, the voice actor decided to go with the flow and see where the journey takes him.
Cowboy Bebop Only a Door to Many Others
As the journey went on, Steve Blum saw himself taking more roles one after the other. His first job was for a 26-episode series called The Guyber and then every other project that came his way was more for the purpose of fun.
We go to this crazy studio and they showed me some footage of a creature ripping the arm off another creature and they said, ‘What would that sound like?’ So, I gave it a go and they said, ‘OK, you’re hired.’ They booked me for twenty-six episodes of a show called ‘The Guyver’ and I just did it because I loved to do it. The people that were running that show picked up other shows and they kept hiring me, kept giving me other parts and I did it for fun. I never expected it to become a career.
It was never about building a career out of his voice acting but more so to enjoy it while it lasted. As he saw the tides changing, he found a path for himself to follow. In it came the career opportunity of embracing himself as a voice actor.
Now Blum is regarded as one of the most decorated English voice actors, having voiced characters such as Spike Spiegel from Cowboy Bebop and Wolverine in Wolverine and the X-Men.
