Raising Her Voice

What do Fisher-Price’s Mix’n Learn Blender, Geico’s insurance policy explanations and “Fallout 4,” one of 2015’s top-selling video games, have in common? The versatile voice of Jan Johns ’00.

She seamlessly transitions between roles, whether cute and exaggerated, clear and serious, or deeply emotional—such as when her limbs are being virtually burned or amputated in a post-apocalyptic world.

“When I’m in the booth, it’s like this Zen experience,” she says. “You have this blank canvas and I find it easy to get drawn into it and create that world.”

Her latest video game comes out this spring: “Mighty No. 9,” a Mega Man remake that pairs her with some of the most accomplished voice actors in the field.

It’s evident just minutes into a conversation that the voices just bubble out of her. She can’t help but drop into a low rasp when she talks about her mom or rise to an excited squeak when she describes the cartoons she watched as a kid.

“The voices got me in trouble all the time,” says Johns, who grew up in Prince George’s County. “I’d get detention for making noises, barking like a dog.”

Chubby as a child and unpopular in school, she found the most joy in memorizing entire Disney anthologies, the soundtrack to “Good Morning, Vietnam” and Whoopi Goldberg’s one-woman show.

She briefly attended the Boston Conservatory before transferring to UMD, where she met her husband, Dan Hoffacker ’00, and flourished in the theater program, earning a full-tuition Creative and Performing Arts Scholarship.

“I’ve had many talented students, but she was one of those standouts. She was wonderful comedian, singer, dancer, actor,” says Professor Scot Reese, who could see the early signs of her transition to voice acting in her musical theater performances. “We don’t have a cookie cutter system here. The ones that take advantage of the people and facilities we have, those are the ones who go on to create their own careers… She’s done more than a teacher could ever ask for.”

After graduation, she joined the Capitol Steps, a political-satire singing group, recorded local commercials and instructional videos for government agencies and performed at the Signature Theater at the Kennedy Center.

But in 2004, she says, “I got really sick and I couldn’t leave my house.” Weakened by what was diagnosed five years later as Addison’s disease, she threw herself into voice acting full time. For several years, she stayed at home while her voice appeared in upbeat local radio ads and patiently explained insurance policies over the phone.

It was steady if unexciting employment—until Bethesda Games announced it was hiring in the D.C. area for the next installment of its wildly popular role-playing game, “Fallout 3.” A friend recommended her for an audition.

“They throw you into a room with a stack of papers, four to five inches thick, and they’re like, ‘OK, this girl just got shot and she lost her brother in the previous fight and now she’s dying and begging for help but also has to give instructions for what to do in the next world,’” she says. “You have to do it all on the fly.”

When she booked it, she started believing she could take her talents national—and finally made the big move to Los Angeles in 2013 that had daunted her after college. It proved fruitful: She’s now voiced commercials for major companies including Google, McDonalds and DoubleTree Hotels; several cartoons for Dreamworks TV, including “News That Doesn’t Stink,” “Public Pool” and the upcoming “JetBear;” and of course, “Fallout 4.”

“They’ve upped the ante quite a bit,” says Johns, who loves playing Scribe Haylen, among other characters. “I’m really grateful that more and more in gaming, they’re writing for the scene and demand great voice acting.”

But despite her success, life as a voice actor can still be lonely and unpredictable, particularly with her family and husband still back in Maryland.

“It’s unbelievable how much time you spend alone, talking to yourself in a box,” she says. No role is guaranteed, even after she’s done the recording, since switching voice actors is relatively easy. She’s learned not to tell people about her parts until she sees the final product (she had to order the Fisher-Price toy off Amazon, for example, to verify that it uses her voice).

Her ultimate goal is to join a long-running animated TV series, like “The Fairly Oddparents.” “Not only would I be financially stable, but I would be able to grow with a character and with a group of people. They’re all in a room together and there’s that family aspect, where everyone is working off of one another.”

“I’m not where I want to be but I feel like I’m getting there,” she says. “It’s something I’ve always loved to do and I just can’t believe I’m lucky enough to even make a living.”

Johns will appear at MAGfest, a music and gaming festival, at the Gaylord National Harbor Hotel from Feb. 18-20.