Seiyu; voice actor/actress is a popular and important occupation in Japan due to 60% of the animated series created in the world are created in Japan. These popular seiyu also release their songs and sing in front of huge audiences.
Voice acting can be divided into four major categories. First is anime which is based on manga comic and video games. The second is dubbing for films and TV. The third is narrations. Most of the seiyu engage in only one category or sometimes two. Usually famous seiyu will not do both anime and film dubbing due to their fame of their voices.
Voice actors/actresses of course exist in Europe but their activities are more limited than in Japan. Then, these voice actors hardly get any fame or even known their faces by public. I think the main reason is the directors do not concentrate on choosing the voice actors as much as Japanese directors do. For example, there are certain voice actors in Japan who always act when certain Hollywood stars act. Which means voices in Japanese for Bruce Willis is always the same in Japan. It can happen that Czech voice actor is talking in standard Czech even if he is dubbing a Chinese accent English. This will not happen to Japanese seiyu who will talk in Chinese accent Japanese.
Anyway, current standard for voice actresses in Japan is good looking and also have to sing well. These voice actresses might be able to be a superstars as normal actresses but they chose to be as seiyu. Popularity of seiyu sometimes overwhelms popularity of normal actors.