We are thrilled to have found Jack to work with us on our audiobook versions of Norman Grubb’s books. Learn more about him here…
An interview with Jack Wynters…
Thank you for letting us ask you some personal questions so our listeners can get to know you a little more. Let’s start at the beginning…
Where were you born?
I was born in Manchester, UK, in the first year of the 2nd World War but my mother took me to rural Oxfordshire away from the bombing, where we lived for the next few years.
Where do you live now?
Alberta, Western Canada
How did you get into acting?
I went to a very good school in the north of England and when I left there at 18, wanting to be an actor, mey parents and my teachers disapproved and said ‘No way; do something better than that.’ In those days one took more advice than kids do now, so I shrugged, swallowed hard and said, ‘OK, I’ll become a doctor then’. So off I went to the University of London and at 23 was a physician. During those years, however, I did a lot of amateur theatre work at university and other amateur theatre groups.
After graduation, I had to do my National Service and worked in military hospitals in London, Berlin, Hong Kong, Singapore and Borneo. Then I moved to live in Canada, specialised in Anesthesiology and lived and worked in Alberta for the next 35 years, After moving to Canada I started auditioning for professional theatre work and started getting good roles in good theatres across Canada. (Anaesthetists can get away quite easily for weeks at a time, so that worked quite well),
How did you get into voice acting?
For years I had had a large sailboat on the west coast near Vancouver, so when I retired from medicine my wife and I first spent the summer on the boat in and around Alaska and then took off south and spent the next 6 years in the South Pacific, between Mexico and New Zealand/Australia and every island group in between.
Wanting to get back to a more normal life, we sold the boat in Australia and settled back in Edmonton, Alberta, where I live now. My 3 children and 2 grand-daughters live close by.For a few years I continued to get stage roles and the occasional small role in movies and TV series. But the trouble with theatre is that I have to be there every night and the money is terrible, and with film one has to be up at 4am and be already to go, on set, by 6. I was getting too old for all that so I quit. It was at that time I was asked by an author to produce an audiobook for him, which I did and was immediately enamoured of the process. After 7 years I still love it. One of the great advantages is that I don’t have to learn the lines! Also, I stay at home, I don’t get cold and wet and I eat regularly.
What was it like reading “Who Am I?”
I have worked on several of Norman Grubb’s books now and feel that I know him quite well. He must have been a remarkable man. His prose is, initially, a bit quirky, but after getting used to it I recognized that his writing is brilliantly mercurial and his mind ranges continuously.
What acting choices did you make in reading this book and why?
In most audiobooks that I produce, there are many acting choices to be made. What kind of accents to be used for the characters in fiction for instance. But in “Who Am I?” Norman Grubb provides the excitement and drama and all I had to do was read it, as is.
Jack at work in the recording studio…
