Derek Stephen Prince

Derek Stephen Prince probably would not be doing voice overs today had it not been for some very key people in his life that had a great impact. His great uncle was the first actor to play Pinocchio on stage, his grandmother and great aunt were professional dancers, his mom and dad did musical theater and his dad often did funny voices and celebrity impersonations.

He had always been trained in musical theater and graduated from Carnegie Mellon with a BFA in it. After taking a leave from doing a musical tour through the states, he wound up back in California where his dad was, and decided to pursue acting. After landing gigs on ER, Saved By the Bell, Profiler and some indie movies, things became slow so he took a class with Bob Bergen, who does the voice of Porky Pig and Tweety Bird. At the time, Bob had a role in Eagle Riders, where Steve first caught onto dubbing for anime.

After taking a multitude of classes, and pounding the pavement, he landed Elgar, his first major voice over role, on Mighty Morphine Power Rangers. Working with directors like Jamie Simone, Wendee Lee, Michael Sorich, Mary Elizabeth McGlynn and Richard Epcar, they all caught on to Steve’s charisma, versatility and dedication to the craft, and he became a natural at doing reactions in 1 take just from reading the script directions.

10 years later, he has created a wealth of characters in the anime world that we all know- a lot of them have Steve’s quirkiness like Keitaro Urashima from Love Hina, Suguru Misato from Mahoromatic, Dr Root from Duel Masters, Mickey from the game Makai Kingdom and Nuke from the .hack series; some stand out because of the funny spin he puts on them like Veemon, Impmon & Beelzamon from seasons 2 & 3 of Digimon, Elgar from Power Rangers, Noxic from Big Bad Beetleborgs or Prince Iggy from SuperPig; some you love to hate like Cho from Samurai Champloo, Phantom from MAR or Takeharu from the upcoming game Persona 3 for PS2; and there are some who, whether good or bad, because he breaths life into them, we realize how human they are like Shino Aburame from Naruto, Uryu Ishida from Bleach, Arashi from Paradise Kiss, Oswold from the upcoming game Odin Sphere, and most notably Ken Ichijoji from Season 2 of Digimon.

He continues to do voice over work every week with his radio program WordPlay, where he takes suggestions from fans and listeners. If you haven’t heard one of his shows, you can go to his website www.steveprinceproductions.com and listen to one of his posted shows.  Three of his most notable shows are Movie Themes where he hosts as Forest Gump, N Words where he hosts as Shino and O Artists where he hosts as Uryu.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Derek Stephen Prince.