Kimberly Farr: Audiobook Narrator
Featuring Kimberly Farr: Audiobook Narrator
Bio:
Kimberly’s acting career began on television in Los Angeles, but eventually took her to New York City. There she appeared four times on Broadway, at the New York Shakespeare Festival, the Roundabout Theatre, Playwright’s Horizons, and the American Place. She created the role of “Eve” in Arthur Miller’s first and only musical, Up From Paradise, which was directed by the author. She appeared as Vanessa Redgrave’s stepdaughter in the Broadway production of Ibsen’s The Lady From the Sea, directed by Tony Richardson. She has also acted in regional theatres, including a stint in the original production of The 1940’s Radio Hour at Washington D.C.’s Arena Stage, and a revival of Accent on Youth, with Kathleen Quinlan at The Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven, Connecticut.
How did you prepare to narrate The Girl in White Gloves:
I had a great time preparing to record this title! As I always do on any project, I read the book through carefully, noting any description the author provided for the characters, setting, time period, and so forth, and made notes about possible voices I might want to use. But then, because so many of the characters are actual human beings (and famous, to boot) I had the enormous fun of watching video footage on all of them and getting ideas about how to suggest their real voices. The producer, director, and I decided that trying to imitate the real folks was not ideal. It seemed that we would have more success by reminding the listener of those characters’ energies and cadences, rather than trying to impersonate them, per se. So I got to delve into all sorts of fascinating Old Hollywood lore and revisit some pretty great film performances.
Kimberly has recorded over 200 titles for Penguin Random House/Books on Tape, Audible, Zondervan, Listening Library, and Reading Rainbow Kidz, among others. She’s read three collections of Alice Munro short stories, novels by Elizabeth Strout, E. B. White, Margaret Atwood, Fannie Flagg, Susan Vreeland, Nora Roberts, Curtis Sittenfeld, Ann Brashares, Debbie Macomber, Ayelet Waldman, Gail Godwin, George Saunders, Melanie Benjamin, Kaya McLaren, and Jane Kirkpatrick, and non-fiction by Ken Burns, Joan Didion, Bob Spitz, Joseph J. Ellis, Mitchell Zukoff, Donald Spoto, Susan Quinn, Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes, and Sylvia Plath.
She has been nominated four times for the Audie Award, has won 14 AudioFile Earphones Awards, appeared three times on the list of AudioFile Magazine’s Best Audiobooks of the Year, won a Publisher’s Weekly Listen Up Award, and was honored as one of AudioFile’s Best Voices of the Year in 2014.
What are your top three books that you’ve narrated?
Other work besides audiobooks?
Ms. Farr also has many television appearances to her credit, including a guest starring role on Star Trek: The Next Generation, and a season on her own CBS series, Live-In. Her feature film credits include the classic Missing, starring Jack Lemmon and Sissy Spacek.