When Phil Bache, voice director for Life is Strange 2, recommended that Gonzalo Martin spend a few hours mingling with homeless people to get a better idea for what life was like for protagonist Sean Diaz, Martin did one better. Rather than walk around for a few hours, he lived on the streets for an entire weekend.

Gonzalo Martin is an actor's actor. He seeks out moments that bring characters to life, and embraces them to fit more snugly into their skin. For nearly an hour, Martin and I discussed how he got his start in acting, the career he pursued before his family opened his eyes to his talent in the theater, and the connection he formed with Sean Diaz.

Author's note: This interview contains spoilers for Life is Strange 2.

David L. Craddock: What sparked your interest in acting?

Gonzalo Martin: I started acting at a very young age, probably when I was six or eight. I was involved in school plays, and I was passionate about acting, but never in a professional way. I didn't go to auditions and stuff like that. I just had my normal life and school, but I enjoyed performing arts thanks to drama classes throughout my years in school.

As time passed, we did better plays, and I get better roles. I loved acting even more, but I still didn't consider it as a career. I thought that in order to be an actor, you had to be born in Hollywood and start as a child actor. In fact, since I was 14, I wanted to be an astronaut. I did studies and training toward that goal. That eventually led me to starting my pilot's license course. I was full-on going for that dream.

I started that when I was 16. Two years later, I was a week away from graduating as a pilot, getting my pilot's license. I was also doing my final performance in a drama play at school. That performance moved me so much, and I enjoyed my time on stage so much, that something started itching. Then my family surprised me by coming to watch me. Afterwards, they said, "Stop messing around with airplanes. Just do this for a living."

I thought it was a joke at first, until, like, the fifty-first family member said it. Something clicked. I said, "Maybe they're right." I thought about it for a weekend, and after that I had a career change. I still went for my pilot's license, and I still got it, but I told my family I realized that acting was my true passion. That's what I wanted to pursue, even though I still loved flying. I still do. But acting fulfills me the most.

Craddock: I can relate. I had a similar situation. I started programming when I was nine or 10, and I was pretty good at it. In college, I'd add on a literature or writing class just to change things up. I had a professor who was so moved by a paper I wrote that she bopped me on the head with it and said, "Quit messing around with computers. You're a writer. You should write."

Martin: [laughs] That's such an amazing story. It's funny. You think you're on the right track. It only takes one person whose opinion you admire to make you say, "Maybe you're right."

Craddock: Before you realized how fulfilling you found acting, what kept you acting in all those plays? What would you say you got out of it?

Martin: You know, that's an excellent question. I've never thought about it. I think all actors like attention, especially when you're a kid. To clarify, the drama class I took in school was mandatory. I had to do it every year. On the other hand, I was the only boy in the class who seemed to enjoy it. I thought it was fun, and wanted the main parts. Everybody else said, "This is the class where we get to do something other than [more difficult math and science courses], but I don't want any main roles." I was the opposite. I loved it.

I liked expressing myself and having a space to be someone else. I liked exploring other people without the barrier of [judgment], or if there is judgment, it's totally toward the character and how the character acts; it's not toward me. Judgment isn't necessarily bad; it could be something good. So it felt like I got to get into a new character's skin every time, play around and be this person without any risk or consequence of, if people don't like [the character], I know they don't dislike me. I liked that escape. And, as a kid, that want for attention.

Craddock: That makes sense. Studies show that people who read more tend to develop greater empathy. I wonder if, as you read these characters and inhabited them, maybe playing them was a way to gain other perspectives.

Martin: Absolutely. You're 100 percent right. People who read are more empathetic because you find these stories about people who experience things that maybe you've never experienced. Now that they have read those stories, they have perspectives of other people's viewpoints. They can realize, "Maybe I didn't know everything. Maybe my judgment toward a subject were [ignorant]. But now that I'm familiar with it, I understand where they come from."

That's what I think is cool about Life is Strange. I think a lot of people who play it don't know what they're getting into. Then, when they play this amazing story with such diversity in character and culture and theme, I feel like these games move their audience. They make people conscious of something they weren't aware of before.

Craddock: Unless my research is wrong, I believe Life is Strange 2 was your first project as a voice actor.

Martin: Correct. It was my first project as a voice actor, and my first game.

Craddock: What were your perceptions of video games as storytelling devices?

Martin: Interestingly enough, I was never big into video games. I didn't grow up with them, wasn't allowed to play them. The only familiarity I had with video games was a shooter game, FIFA, Mario Kart. Stuff that helped you [escape]. I never thought of video games as having story formats.

When I realized [Life is Strange 2's] amazing story would take place in a game, I was blown away by how cool it was that a game could do this. It wasn't like, "I'm playing the story, and that's it." I think the coolest factor of Life is Strange is that you make the choices. The first time I played Life is Strange 1, in order to get familiar with the [universe], I was blown away. It was my first time playing that type of game where there's a story, and every time I made a decision, I felt like the writer. I said, "I get to be the audience, the writer, and the director."

It felt amazing. I never knew games could do that, and I was mesmerized by the idea of being involved in a game that could do that. And not just a dumb action game like, "I'm going to kill you!" and that's all the dialogue there is. I feel really fortunate and very grateful to have got this opportunity.

Craddock: How did the project come to your attention?

Martin: I didn't know it was a video game. I only knew it was a voiceover gig with a lot of lines. I said, "Is this dubbing? Am I dubbing for a show?" But then I said, "How could this be dubbing when the format wasn't: One character speaks, then another character, then the first character. But I didn't really question it, because it was just an audition.

I went in and did the audition. It was one of my first voiceover auditions, so it was very new. Then I didn't hear back for six months. I got another voiceover audition, went in, did it. Then I finished and said, "Wait a minute. This material seems familiar. Is it possible I've read some of this?" They said, "Yeah, around six months ago. This is your callback."

I said, "Uh. Can I go again?" I had no idea it was a callback. I was surprised by that. I didn't even know I was working on Life is Strange 2 right away.

Craddock: When you got the part, how much reference material were you given to understand Sean as a character, and how much would you say you created for the part as you worked?

Martin: The breakdown was along the lines of, "16 years old. Mexican-American. Must speak fluent English, fluent Spanish with a Mexican accent. Good acting chops for a lot of dramatic moments." But it didn't specify, "This is a young boy whose father dies right around the [street] corner of the first episode." I discovered that as I went along, the more we read and recorded. It was a day-to-day thing. We didn't get scripts until the night before, sometimes a day or two before. And not even the full episode all at once. Sometimes we'd get fragments from [the current] episode.

I learned the story as I went, and we recorded [content within] episodes out of order. Of course, we recorded episode one, two, and so on. But within episode one, we'd start with the ending, then go back to the beginning, realize we missed a line from the ending and go back, then move into the middle. I worked with the director to figure out where we were, what were the circumstances, what's the environment. That's all I had as a reference to pull from. Because I was new to voice acting and not really good at it, the director suggested I play the first LIS in order to get familiar with voiceover and what type of format this game is.

Other than that, it was up to me to bring my own experiences and touch to Sean. I grew a lot as an actor and as a person over the two and a half years playing Sean.

Craddock: When you say you weren't very good at it at first, what specifically was giving you trouble?

Martin: Over the first couple of recording sessions, I would get maybe 15 to 20 lines per hour. We needed to be getting 45 to 60 lines per hour. And I was doing my best. I was going full speed and super-proud, like, "Yeah! We got through a lot of lines today!" They said, "Yeah, but we need to be getting through 60." I said, "What?!" [laughs]

Playing a little bit of the first game helped me with a lot of types of lines. The lines I struggled with the most were the easiest lines. The ones where you weren't interacting with [other characters]. Those were hardest for me because to pretend I'm talking with somebody for me than having an inner monologue. Playing the first game helped me get the feeling of an inner-monologue tone.

For the rest of the scenes, to nail each take faster, I had to [build] my acting chops. I studied lines more, ran them as many times as I could so that I could go into the studio having already made certain choices and having put myself in the shoes of the character. The director suggested I go out on the streets one day and hang out with some homeless people. Not have breakfast or lunch; just hang out. When I get challenged, I like to take the challenge to the next level. I thought, You know, I think that would be a great exercise, but I don't think I'd learn as much as I could.

In order to have something real to pull from, I went out and slept on the streets for a weekend so I could get into Sean's skin. I wanted to know what it felt like to be homeless, cold, sleeping out on the streets, and alert for any critters and dangerous people. That helped me a lot. That was during episode one.

The following week, when I went back in to record, the director said, "Line one." Bam—I got it.

He said, "Line two." Bam—I got it.

Line three, line four. By the fifth line, the director was like, "Okay, what are you doing differently? We used to have to do five or six takes for each line. Now you're nailing every line on the first take." I told him I followed his advice and ending up sleeping on the streets.

That's the day the game had changed. Not the game as in [Life is Strange 2], but the [acting] game for me: Me, working with a director. I felt like I'd earned his respect, and that we finally started understanding each other. From that day onward, I was really cruising.

By the end of the journey, by episode five, I was doing 65 to 70 lines per hour. I got much better, and I'm very proud of that because there was definitely a learning curve for me. I can definitely tell the difference between day one and my last day.

Craddock: One part of your performance that fans found powerful was how Sean starts out irritated by adults, especially his dad. I felt like most people could relate to that: Sean's a teenager, so he has one foot in childhood and one in adulthood. Could you relate to that awkward stage between childhood and adulthood?

Martin: Absolutely. I feel like I grew with Sean. Even though I didn't live through everything Sean did, the fact that I had to perform them, put myself in those places emotionally and mentally, I felt like I [understood those experience better]. I grew with Sean because he went through so much. That's what helped me grow as a person. I would think, What would I do in this situation?

Craddock: When you received the scenes involving the death of Sean's and Daniel's father at the hands of a rookie cop, how did you approach that? How did you get into such an emotional head space?

Martin: There were so many emotional scenes in every episode. For episode one, it was Esteban's death. In episode two, it was seeing Chris get run over by a car. Episode three had the heist. Episode four had the faith and the church. And episode five... I'm not going to say in case you haven't finished it. When we got each of those scenes, it was great to have Phil, the voiceover director, there.

He's an amazing director. He has such a finely tuned ear. He can hear bullshit performances, and can tell when you're really there, and when you're not. When we had to shoot Esteban dying, that was within the first couple of weeks of us working together. I remember he told me, basically, "Hey, [Sean] gets beaten down by life from moment one. I need you to be at your worst. I need you to be devastated. Pull from your own experiences." Whatever I'd do, he'd say, "I need more. I need more. This is your father dying."

Eventually, from working and working, we got that performance where I really felt like I was in front of my dad, watching him get shot over nothing. Even building up to it where the cop is shouting, "Get on the ground!", I felt like, "Hey, what the fuck? We didn't do anything. Daniel, just do as he says, okay?"

Even thinking about that scene takes me back to when we recorded it, and the place I went to in my head. Watching and re-watching it is like reliving it, like when I see playthroughs of the game. I'm very happy with what we got. I remember how hard it was to get those lines, how hard we pushed, and how hard we worked to get those takes. I'm very proud and happy about that.

Craddock: Some doctors see so much tragedy that they have no choice but to mentally and emotionally detach, even though it means their bedside manner suffers. As an actor, how do you go to those dark places, and then find your way back?

Martin: That's an excellent question. In fact, it's one of the things they teach you in school from the get-go. When you're doing so many emotional scenes where you're really invested—because that's what you're supposed to do—it's really hard to, when the director yells, "Cut. That's the scene. It's over. Go back to your normal life," and you've been [portraying a character] who's suffering—it's not as easy as flipping a switch.

They teach us this in school, because many actors get too invested and are unable to come back. I learned how to avoid that, and how to come back to my normal self. My strategy is to fire up a specific playlist, the same as when you're feeling down and out. You want something that brings you back up. Especially after acting. It's kind of hard to remember how to get back to yourself.

After recording emotional scenes, I'd be drained emotionally and physically. I'd leave the studio exhausted. I'd get into my car and have this sense of pride and achievement: No matter how hard it was, how dark we had to get, I knew we'd achieved something today that would last forever. I'd think, I'm leaving today having done work I'm proud of. Just that sense of fulfillment and pride could be enough to make me want to come back and do more and more every time.

When the episodes started coming out, the fan following grew more and more, and I started getting messages from fans saying how much the game meant to them because they could relate to it. They were so connected to it. It felt great. For starters, I never thought you could connect so much to a game. But the fact that so many people felt connected to Sean because they were the older brother, or they were Mexican or another minority group—everybody had their motivation for relating to the character.

When I see how many people enjoy the game now, and how many people find themselves in the story, it's even more fulfilling to be a part of this project. One of the main reasons I wanted to be an actor was because I wanted to tell stories that inspired and moved people, that had an impact. Realizing I was part of a project that had such a big impact felt really good. It had actual social value. It wasn't a game where people could just play it and forget about it in a month.

Craddock: I'm a big brother, and it's an interesting experience. You can't always be your little brother's friend. You're in a position where you have to help shape and raise them. I really related to Sean's role in that regard.

Martin: Absolutely. I was very lucky to have experienced the things I've experienced as a brother, and put them into the game. I'm the youngest of five, and one of my brothers was around 16 when I was nine, I think. Having an older brother helped me to get into the mentality of, "Don't touch my stuff! Why are you doing this?" The older brother mentality of having to watch out for a younger brother. I would think, What was my relationship with my older brother like? How annoying was I? 

When it came to the tender parts, like teaching and doing things for Daniel, I'd remember that after I got old enough, my family became a foster family. We were a foster family for five different babies, so I got to be an older brother to five kids at five different times. I loved that I was able to pull from that experience. When I'd read lines, I'd think, I see why my older brother hated me so much growing up. I did the types of things Daniel is doing. [laughs] He was always like, "Get out of my room, man!" Then, for teaching Daniel, it was a balance between what I'd learned as a younger brother, and what I had learned as an older brother to my five foster siblings. I'd have to find an adult tone where you're trying to explain something to them in a way where you can't be their friend; you have to be the voice of reason.

I'm glad I had so much to pull from for the game.