As a teenager, I got more baby-sitting jobs than the other girls because I was able to entertain the kids by reading books with all the sound effects and different voices. I was in many plays, had a local originination television show, and earned extra money doing message tapes for businesses and private individuals.
I mainly learned by doing. My parents encouraged me and my brothers by exposing us to various types of music, literature and other arts and sciences. My mother was from Memphis, my father from Queens, we lived in a Jewish neighborhood in New York and summered every year in Maine. Our relatives always wondered what we would end up sounding like. Consequently, my brothers and I are all adept at various accents and dialects.
I was editor of an award-winning literary magazine, majored in film and theater in college, worked at a cable television studio where I did voice-overs and movie and theater reviews on the show, "Sarasota on Review". I did a brief stint in the phone sales department where I got multiple marriage proposals because of my "Beautiful" and "sexy" voice.