Listening to yourself, Pim, is a very dangerous practice for any actor, as you tend to tinker with the image of what you think you hear.    I was taught by a brilliant voice teacher at RADA, Clifford Turner, and he always discouraged this practice.   Best to listen to technical advice to remedy defects - it's an endless learning curve - and I remember his advice to give my voice 'a keener mental direction' as it sharpened my focus on what I was saying.    Mental direction also helps to deploy energy constructively as pace and variety keep a performance alive.    A long run in London's West End is also an advantage for vocal development but it's always best to seek independent advice from someone you can trust.    Vocal mannerisms become difficult to eradicate.  Also, it is important to know when to stop any process of modification.    What we called 'the voice lovely' is seldom heard these days!     

Thank you for the link; I'll catch up as the emphasis may be different to my first impression.

Thanks, Pim.    This is a fascinating subject, open to a wide variety of interpretation.   Yesterday, my mind pursued the hallucinations and the ripe prose which G B Shaw provided for the character of St Joan.  I remember the performances of Siobhan McKenna (Kenneth Williams as the Dauphin) and, later, Barbara Jefford in the role.   Both radiant performances, confirming total belief in their inner voices.

"Dead of Night", a quite scary 1945 film, was portmanteau in its format.   In one of the stories, Michael Redgrave, as a ventroloquist, did a character transference with his dummy, including adopting its character and voice!  Madness ensued.   

On a more stable level, you only have to listen to an impression of you own voice, on a recorder; or look at a photograph of yourself.   Both facets are usually disappointing - well, I discount the natural egoist! - probably because a detached view removes us, at a stroke, from the dimension of our inner selves, but outsiders get a more dimensional impression, from their perspective.   Back to relativity.

That's 25 years. Stretching the definition of 'infant' a little, I think