Ralph Lister

Born in one of the unlikeliest of places - on the desk of the British High Commissioner in New Delhi, India - native British stage and film actor Ralph Lister lives happily in whatever real or imagined world he finds himself. The son of a British diplomat, Ralph spent his youth getting a taste for life and adventure abroad - kindergarten in Austria, and then throughout high school, endless trips overseas to Spain, France, Italy, Greece, Turkey, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Kenya, and, for four years, to Indonesia and its surrounding islands. After an unashamedly elitist education in private schools in the South of England (learning Latin, and speaking French and German), his first taste of America came when he won an English-Speaking Union scholarship to a prep school in Connecticut, graduating Cum Laude after two semesters. There Ralph took to all kinds of hilarious mischief, events which he still chuckles about today with his life-long American friends (Ralph recently attended his graduating year's 25th year reunion at Avon Old Farms). Those high jinks were a happy extension of the adventures when, as a boy aged 16, he and a pal hitch-hiked from London to Rome (and back), sleeping in fields and under bridges, and living off US$1.00/day, eating bread and tomatoes and discovering - for the first time - the delights of red wine (which, today, is one of Ralph's greatest pleasures). After the predictable university route (BA Hons in Modern History from Durham University in the North-East of England, and acting acting acting, including summer tours of Ireland and SW England performing Shakespeare), Ralph was off once again, this time to a life in Spain, immersing himself in English-language teaching in Madrid and in Zaragoza, and at summer camps in Andalusia and Murcia. After nearly three years, it was only the decision to leave teaching which tore him away from a wildly happy Spanish life (Ralph still dreams in Castillian even today). Training briefly in radio in London, Ralph secured a job as a DJ on the pirate radio ship The Voice of Peace, anchored in the Eastern Mediterranean 6 miles off the coast of Tel Aviv, Israel, which - though sadly now sunk today - played a diet of western pop music to a hungry Israeli public and armed forces. Travelling all over Israel and then down the Nile on a tiny felucca sail boat in Egypt, Ralph returned to the States, working in Houston, Texas, for a local AOR radio station. With his two older brothers living by then in the Orient, Ralph thereafter moved to Hong Kong for a full 10 years - largely in business - traveling all over the interior of China, and running a transshipment center in the old US naval base of Subic Bay in the Philippines. After gaining a US green card in 1997, Ralph's innate creative passion was allowed to take control - at last. Coming initially to New Orleans (working at the historic Le Petit theatre and character acting in the Audubon Zoo) before moving to Los Angeles, he entered headlong into the world's most competitive and arguably most rewarding business: acting. His on-camera and stage credits, from all over the world, tell their own story. Today, his exhilarating, Audie-nominated audiobook work and Best Actor awards for both stage and film (2011 Grand Award, and 2014 Eclipse Award, respectively) continue to lead him into the delightfully strange worlds of the many characters he plays on camera and embodies in voice. Men, women, the young, the old, in all their wonderful humanity and accents - Ralph plays these with gusto and panache, as if all the lives he led before settling in America somehow saw to it these characters would be authentically formed out of the joys of personal success and the agonies of personal failure. As an audiobook narrator, Ralph has recorded more than 130 titles and directed 13 others, across all genres, in both fiction and non-fiction. When not filming on set, he records out of his professional-grade home studio, with Gabby-catlet as his companion and first audience. When not in acting class or on-stage, Ralph has found the very best way to stay continuously in top shape as an actor is to narrate audiobooks: getting well-paid to become an increasingly better communicator of character, by voicing a vast range of people, day-in, day-out. (If this sounds like being paid to be in acting class, this is exactly what it is, folks. Other actors, please take this to heart...) A US citizen since 2009, today Ralph shares his time between his homes in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and in Los Angeles, California. The adventures continue...