Seanie Ruttledge, the journey so far, Comedian, Voice Artist, Actor...
Sean Ruttledge is a versatile actor, comedian and award winning voiceover artist with a passion for bringing characters to life. "Seanie" as he's known to his friends, grew up in working class Yorkshire (God's own country) and having lived in Pickering North Yorkshire as a child and later Rotherham South Yorkshire as a youth he lays claim to TWO native Yorkshire accents!
Starting out as a baby faced club comedian in the late 1980's he became known for his countless funny voices and impressions of numerous celebrities of the day, Patrick Allen, Richard Burton, Morgan Freeman, Roger Moore, Jack Nicholson and even a young upstart named Sean Bean were all part of the repertoire
Seanie has dipped in and out of the live stand-up comedy scene over the years and currently performs as EmCee (Compere) at a number of London comedy nights, having moved down south in 1990 to chase the dream... (and to refine his northern accent)
Progressing onwards from live stand-up in smoky pubs and clubs he found a passion for writing and performing sketch comedy, at one point founding the "Improv to sketch" comedy troupe, Sketchy.co.uk
Sketch comedy lead him into the world of impro which in turn lead to a fascination with physical comedy, clown and bouffon (the anti-clown) which created the slippery slope into countless workshops and training courses with world leading teachers in disciplines such as characters, commedia dell'arte, slapstick and more
During a live comedy performance one night in the early noughties, an audience member, impressed at the range of accents he'd heard, Invited Seanie to record some comedy wine labels in various regional accents for a PR viral campaign, a hefty pay cheque and a crate of wine later Seanie was now on the rungs of the professional voice artist ladder
Initially only interested in "the art" of voice acting, Seanie gained several gigs with indy games developers and animations producers giving life to an array of fantasy characters, trolls, dwarven elders, gangster goblins, a werewolf monk, mages, a wizard, a cheeky parrot, a posh toucan and many many more, character voices was firmly where he wanted to stay, indeed just recently he has given voice to a slayer prince in the epic video game
Total War - Warhammer III
One day with big bills to pay, his then VO agent (now retired) sent him a script for an Insurance commercial, after telling her he wasn't interested in selling out as a starving artiste and working for "the man" he quickly learned there was a juicy usage fee, a sum of cash that would ease him out of artistic hunger and allow him the comfort of pursuing the art of being a performing artist without wasting away from starvation
From that day forwards he focused on becoming the best professional commercial voice-over artist he could possibly be so that he had the luxury of indulging in the less lucrative side of "The Art" the character voices he so dearly loved, he had already learned that "show business is business" and well, a man's gotta eat!
TV & Radio ads followed for brands including Qantas, Adidas, BMW Indeed, the RSPCA, Talk Mobile, Cadburys, and even movie trailers for the likes of Lionsgate, in fact Seanie was nominated for 2 prestigious "Golden Trailer" awards for voicing trailers to "Mortdecai" in 2015!
Obviously you don't get to voice the trailers to major movie productions every day, so lots of day to day voice-over work has also been done on corporate productions, e-learning, explainer videos and the like, even the odd audio drama and audiobook production
In the early 2000's whilst chauffeuring celebrities around London in limousines for a living, Seanie was to meet 2 incredible people that set him on his current path, the first of whom was Ken Dowe, a legendary radio broadcaster from Texas who reputedly gave the first ever paycheque to our very own DJ John Peel, Ken, aside from having an incredible broadcasters voice, also did funny voices, particularly a character called "Granny Emma" needless to say the chauffeur and his V.I.P. passenger would unleash a whole cast of characters in improvised stories as they drove around the UK together, it was Ken Dowe who originally told Seanie he truly had a "face for radio" and encouraged him to pursue making a living through using his vocal talents
The next major influence on Seanie's career as a performer came from a very distinguished actress he chauffeured only a couple of times, this remarkable lady was a great story teller and she would chat away about her childhood and her early training as an actress, one day she said to Seanie "of course, you're an actor aren't you" which made him blush and explain that whilst he'd performed stand-up and sketch comedy he didn't really consider himself to be an actor yet, 'Well you have an actors voice! you MUST become an actor!" she insisted
At the time this lovely lady was recognisable as a comedically cantankerous older lady in a series of TV commercials for Tesco Supermarkets, it wasn't until many days later that the penny finally dropped, this wonderfully encouraging lady was none other than Sybil Fawlty! Prunella Scales to be precise! (Mrs. West on the booking) if Sybil Fawlty was insisting Seanie was born to be an actor then an actor he was surely to become!
Much training in the art form followed and 20 years on, "The Actor" Seanie has been cast in a couple of TV sitcoms, several films, animations, computer games, lots of TV comedy shows and even drifted into some serious acting in TV and film dramas, credits to many of which can be found on his IMDB & Spotlight Performer profiles linked below, he's looking forward to many many more as
The journey continues...
