Choosing an Impression
Choose someone you know a lot about. It’s more difficult to do an impression of someone you don’t know much about or haven’t seen in more than one role. Pick someone whose movies or songs you have watched or listened to many times. To learn more about someone, watch them in a variety of roles, listen to a variety of their music, watch interviews they’ve done, and read as much about them as you can.
Pick a celebrity with a distinctive voice or accent. It's much easier to do an accurate impression of someone with an instantly-recognizable way of speaking. While the physical side of an impression is also important, a good vocal imitation will make or break your impression.
Choose an impression that matches your physical characteristics. To do a convincing impression, it helps to pick someone you already resemble physically. Frank Calliendo does a great John Madden impression because he shares the same rotund and jolly appearance as Madden. Alternatively, it can be humorous to perfect an impression of a celebrity that is drastically different than you physically. A tiny girl doing a convincing Chris Farley impression could be hilarious.
Figure out the celebrity's "viewpoint." The goal of the impressionist isn't to create a perfect mirror of the celebrity, but to capture the "feeling" of that celebrity. Watch movies, shows, and especially interviews with your chosen celebrity and take note of their emotions, speech patterns, facial expressions, gestures, and way of looking at the world. Sarah Palin is known for presenting a "folksy" image of herself. Let that folksiness creep into your performance.
Studying Mannerisms and Speech
Make a list of all the particularities of your celebrity. As you watch and listen to the person you're impersonating, keep a running list of quotes, mannerisms, gestures, and facial expressions that they make. Use lots of adjectives in your list. Here, you're already creating the impression, describing them in words and translating their presence into your own voice. Use this list to start slowly working through your impression. For example, note that Brad Pitt is always eating and drinking in his movies, Nene Leakes is constantly patting her weave, and Elvis Presley curls his upper lip.
Emulate unique traits the celebrity has. George W. Bush's squint and mispronunciations are essential to an impression of him, just as a Shatner impression must involve strange pauses. A good impression is made up of both physical and vocal components that combine to give us the impression of that celebrity. Start by perfecting those unique traits and developing your impression from there.
Quote the celebrity’s lines. Often, a celebrity will have a particular catch phrase or quote from a movie from which to start with. A good Al Pacino accent would be incomplete without the phrase "say hello to my little friend" from Scarface. Even if you can't do a physical version of Pacino, yet, working out that single sentence is a good start.
Pay attention to the sound of the voice. Voices can be nasal, meaning that they are high pitched and whiny, or they can come from the gut, meaning that they're deeper and more mellow. Watching the way the person talks can help you locate their voice. Practice speaking from different "places" (such as head voice, which is higher, or chest voice, which is lower) to get a feel for your own voice's range. The Rock’s voice comes from the throat and has a bit of a growl. Fran Drescher’s voice is high and nasally.
Consider the speed of speech. Some people speak very quickly, while others seem to draw out their words a bit more. Pay attention to whether your chosen celebrity’s speech seems rushed, relaxed, or somewhere in between. For instance, Robert Downey Jr. often speaks super fast.
Practice your accents. If you want to do a Christopher Walken impression, it helps to be able to do a solid New York accent before attempting it. If you want to do a Julia Child accent, practice your British inflections. The more you practice and study, the more convincing your impression will be! When you become familiar with the general accents, work on specifying them. Within the world of British-English accents, South African, Australian, Welsh, and Scottish accents are all wildly different and unique. Studying accents will help you narrow in on the specific speech patterns of the celebrity you hope to impersonate.
Work on one physical and one vocal characteristic at a time. It can be overwhelming to try to capture all of the quirks that make up a particular celebrity all at once. But since it's a combination of physical and vocal tics, you'll want to try to do them in union. Start with, say, Pacino's shout and the exasperated glare that he does. Alternatively, adopt the lopsided smile that Drew Barrymore has and work on recreating the way she speaks out of the side of her mouth.
Practicing Your Impression
Record your impression. Your voice in your head sounds different than your voice to other people. To give yourself a good idea of how you sound while doing your impression, record it on your phone and play it back to see how you're progressing.
Practice in the mirror. Jim Carrey famously practiced many hours each day in front of the mirror. Use a mirror to see what you look like when doing an impression, and adjust your facial expressions based on whether you are over- or under-doing it. If you’re trying to do an impression of Victoria Beckham, you’ll want to make sure you’re not allowing much emotion in your facial expressions. Practice speaking in her posh British accent in front of the mirror and concentrate on looking bored and annoyed.
Read aloud from a book or magazine. Coming up with something to say in a given voice can be difficult. To give yourself a wealth of sentences, just read in the voice that you're working on. Vary the tempo and the emotion behind it while you read to practice the different ranges of the voice that you're trying to work out. This will also help you figure out what kinds of words or phrases work well in that voice and what don't. In this way, you can start crafting a better impression.
Repeat what you hear on the radio. While driving, turn on the radio and repeat back what's being said or sung in the voice that you're working out. This is particularly good for impressions of singers. Doing a Britney Spears song in a Jim Morrison voice will also be humorous to reveal to your friends.
Keep working on it. Like playing an instrument, a good impression needs to be maintained. Don't let your Shatner get rusty. Even after you think you've got a good impression worked out, go back to it every now and then to keep the impression fresh. Consider adding dimensions to the impression. Will Ferrell's President Bush impression grew in complexity over the many years that he performed it.
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