Meet the queen of the scream queens: An actor who overdubs movie shrieks

Ashley Peldon is a "professional scream artist" whose voice is heard in Jurassic World, Paranormal Activity, and more

By Reid McCarter  |  April 13, 2022 | 3:00pm
Film Features Scream
Meet the queen of the scream queens: An actor who overdubs movie shrieks
A photograph of Edvard Munch’s The Scream, which everyone knows depicts a professional scream artist hard at work. Photo: Carl Court

Despite what the Oscars’ broadcast format might have you believe, it’s important to recognize that a lot of non-famous people play an important role in film making. These unsung heroes might be production designers. They might be the creators of prosthetic dicks. Or, in the case of Ashley Peldon, they might be the raw-lunged artists responsible for recording movie screams.

We’ve been introduced to Peldon—and her profession—through an article over at The Guardian that details her career. Appropriately enough, the road that led her to screaming for money began with her getting a part in the movie Child Of Rage when she was seven. The role required “long scenes of shouting and screaming” and was, Peldon says, a job that “shifted my entire career and personal journey.”

Peldon continued acting over the decades that followed, working primarily in voiceover beginning in the late 2000s, and eventually gained a reputation as a very good screamer. She describes her niche in the world of voice acting as being similar to stunt work because she “[does] the hard stuff that could be damaging to an actor’s voice or is out of their range.”

In order to perform good screams, Peldon assesses a character’s motivation and screams in a way that expresses the emotion they’re feeling. “There are many different screams: of fear, anger, rage,” she writes. “Screams of joy and success, and that raw, embodied scream of female empowerment. There’s the wailing of grief and pain, and screams of effort and fighting.” (Of these, she says “those portraying grief” are the most difficult.”)

Peldon’s screaming can be heard in movies like Paranormal Activity, Free Guy, and, naturally, this year’s Scream. She says her “work often comes in at the post-production stage” and, aside from protecting another actor’s pipes, is used to “offer a different vocal quality to the performance” or provide sounds that couldn’t be nailed while filming.

Peldon isn’t asked about what a professional scream artist’s dream job would look like, but we’ll go ahead and suggest that it’s a John Lennon biopic focused entirely on his early post-Beatles work.

[via Boing Boing]

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