Ben Starr has had a wild past couple of years. A professional actor for over a decade, Starr’s star turn in Final Fantasy XVI as main character Clive Rosfield put him on the map in the world of video games, and his good looks and oddball sense of humor took things from there. He’s since amassed a sizable online following, something in which he takes great pride. He also likes to mess with his fans. Related: Starr’s Wikipedia page claims he was “president of the gerbil breeding society” at his alma mater, University of Durham. This is not, strictly speaking, true.
Starr, who has posted videos of himself as Tifa from Final Fantasy VII, a very sexual version of Sony’s Astro Bot, and a glitched-out cube from Spider-Man 2, among others, loves a good bit. So when I mentioned his Wikipedia page during an interview at a Warframe: 1999 press event in LA last week, he happily finished my sentence for me.
“Gerbil breeding,” he said with a look of satisfaction on his face.
"I did a podcast once where I said, 'You can change my Wikipedia, and I won't ever change it back. I don't really care,'" Starr told Aftermath. "And someone did. So the fact is, no one's ever changed it or checked, and I haven't changed it. I should do more due diligence, but I quite like this scenario where somebody is like 'One more question...' and I'm like 'There you go. You read my Wikipedia.' I love it."
Despite his far-reaching reputation as a vaunted gerbil breeder, Starr does not plan on ever trying his hand at turning two gerbils into significantly more.
"I would know nothing about that, and I would never want anyone to think that I would breed gerbils,” Starr said. “I love gerbils, but I think gerbils should breed by themselves of their own free will. I think gerbils should be allowed to live on their own terms. I shouldn't be their lord and savior and enforcer of breeding. I fight for the rights of all gerbils. I stand here now with gerbils in solidarity saying 'Strike, strike, strike for your rights.'"
Starr might carry himself with an air of madcap silliness, but he takes his craft extremely seriously. He views games as fertile soil for performances he couldn’t pull off anywhere else, and he’s thrilled that this industry has welcomed him with open arms.
"I'm fortunate enough to lend my, for lack of a better word, talents to really interesting explorations of the human condition, but on social media, I can be a complete idiot – to be genuine and serious and emotional and vulnerable in a game, but online, I can be a clown at the same time," he said. “I'm really excited to see where the rabbit hole goes, like taking a lot of the learnings I've been fortunate to take from film theory, from stage, to see what I can do in a performance sense – getting on the performance capture stage and seeing what I can do there and push myself in ways that I haven't done before. ... You're not restricted by the way you look. Aesthetics are not important. It's about the essence of your character and what you bring to it. It's honesty reflected in a very different way."
Starr, who’s recently landed gigs in games like Warframe and Hades 2, as well as hosting this year’s Golden Joystick awards, is happy to see the video game industry shine more of a spotlight on actors.
"I think for a long time in this industry, many incredibly gifted performers have been sidelined because people don't often play games for the performance. But there's something like [Warframe: 1999] where they are showcasing the talent,” Starr said. “They're celebrating us as an integral part of what makes this expansion special, and it's been a really cool thing to embrace."
Starr does, however, wish a few select companies at the top of the food chain would do a better job of respecting the talent that lends so many games their unique voices. Striking, after all, isn’t just for gerbils.
"As a fan of video games, I want to see them made,” said Starr, who is based out of England and isn’t currently part of SAG-AFTRA. “But also as a person who works in [the industry], I want to see them done in a fair way that rewards the incredible amount of work that goes into performance and certainly how we can as fans engage with games, which I think more and more and more you've seen [involves voice actors]."
The nonstop barrage of jokes, then, belies Starr’s awareness of what he views as a responsibility to fans.
"There's a desire to paint fans and parasocial relationships as very dangerous things, and I get that,” he said. “I'm sure those can exist. But as a fan myself, I recognize how to interact with performers and know when to step back. I know my responsibility. It's my responsibility to let fans know that I'm engaging in a way that's healthy and in no way anything other than that. I think we get it: I'm a playful idiot. If you want to play along with me, I'm playing games with you. … How do we nod and wink and understand that, fundamentally, this is all pretend, but at the same time respect and venerate the work? It's a push and pull all the time."
But there is at least one place where these polarized expressions of Starr’s personality can meet in the middle, gerbil-like: He’s open to voicing a gerbil in a video game.
"If there are any developers out there who are doing any gerbil-based games, I would love to [voice them],” he said. “As you can see from my Wikipedia, I was head of the gerbil breeding society, so I know a lot about them."
