City Lights:

There are two general rules about impressions: most people do them from time to time, and most of them are atrocious. I learned the latter the hard way; in high school, I repeatedly tried to entertain friends with my Woody Allen impersonation, then stopped when I realized no one ever laughed at it.

Still, just as some people are blessed with the ability to walk a tightrope or hurl a fastball, some people are born impersonators. Witness Bethany Owen, a Huntington Beach resident who has been doing impressions on the road for decades and has a show coming up Tuesday at the Balboa Bay Club & Resort in Newport Beach.

I got a press release about Owen in the mail a couple of weeks ago. The Edison High School graduate bills herself as the “Woman of 1,001 Voices and Faces,” and while her total repertoire really is closer to 400 impressions, well, I figured they were still better than my Woody Allen.

So I set up a meeting with Owen and her husband at the Balboa Bay Club on Monday, and it turns out I was right. For nearly an hour, with Independent photographer Don Leach’s camera running, Owen blazed through more than a dozen portions of her act, even getting an impromptu round of applause from a group of teens sunbathing by the pool.

During her stage show, Owen often goes through costume and wig changes to embody the women she’s portraying. In person, with her milky skin, slender frame and reddish-brown hair, she doesn’t look much like, say, Tina Turner or Marilyn Monroe, but that voice can do wonders. To my mind, her most dead-on impression was Fran Drescher on “The Nanny,” although her takes on Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton were more than good enough for “Saturday Night Live.”

So how does one become a professional impersonator? Owen told me that when she was 18, she sang with a touring Vegas-style band and the producer asked the singers to perform a TV medley. Even though Owen had never done impressions before, her version of Edith Bunker on “All in the Family” went over so well that she decided to try her hand at Cher, and a career was born.

The only thing Owen doesn’t do impressions of, unfortunately, is men, although she does perform a routine as the mothers of Rodney Dangerfield, Jackie Mason and other old-time comics. She’s still expanding her bag of tricks, too. The next voice she’s working on mastering is Oprah Winfrey’s.

Maybe once she does, she’ll be invited onto Oprah’s show. After all, she’s gotten props from her sources before.

A few years ago, she said, Dolly Parton enjoyed her impersonation so much that she invited Owen to do voices in her stage act — of other country singers, not Dolly herself.

“I hope, if people are in my act,” Owen told me, “they take it as a compliment.”

Owen’s show, “One Voice,” takes place Tuesday at the Balboa Bay Club & Resort, 1221 W. Coast Hwy., Newport Beach. The show is free and starts at 8:30 p.m. For reservations, call (949) 630-4382.

City Editor MICHAEL MILLER can be reached at (714) 966-4617 or at michael.miller@latimes.com .