Ashley Peldon is a professional scream artist who spends hours screaming into high-fidelity microphones to record various types of screams for movies and TV shows. It’s not an easy thing to pull off. Just like stunt people replace most actors for dangerous scenes, scream artists put their vocal cords on the line for scenes that could temporarily or permanently damage the actors’ voices. As a scream artist, Peldon has to know the subtle differences between screams and determine whether she should peak at certain points or remain steady for a long time. There are a lot of different screams, like screams of fear, anger, rage, joy and success. Out of all of them, it’s those expressing grief that are the most difficult for the scream artist. Her talent for screaming was discovered at a young age, and her ability for screaming naturally played a big part in her getting early movie roles. She landed her first job at age 7, and by the time she reached her 20s, she had done over 40 films and TV series. Peldon says she doesn’t practice her screaming, it just sort of comes out naturally, depending on the scene she's working on. However, she does sometimes do up to eight hours of screaming into microphones, which can feel exhausting. Although screaming comes naturally to Peldon, she did temporarily lose her ability once, after she got a little carried away on the rides at Disneyland with her kids.
