acting technique

There’s a trite saying about writing that unimaginative professors like to trot out when they’ve run out of original thoughts: “Writers write,” is what they say, generally with a smug, knowing look. Although this is a meaningless phrase disguised as ...

“An audition’s an opportunity to have an audience.” — Al Pacino As actors we spend a lot of time thinking about auditions, and that’s probably okay. After all, the audition is our version of a job interview! But problems can ...

A few years ago the brilliant “Key and Peele” sketch comedy show featured a hilarious parody of “Les Mis” that had even fans of the musical rolling in the aisles. To give you some idea, it currently has some 8 ...

Confidence is a tricky beast, even for famously confident people like actors. You can be having a great day, then one little thing can shake your confidence and it’s completely shot, never to be found again. A common tale among ...

As artists in a demanding, competitive field, successful actors are constantly pushing themselves. There’s always the next class, the next audition, the next performance to prepare for. But one place where many actors fail to keep on top of the ...

As actors we all have our personal strengths. Like a baseball power hitter, we all have our wheelhouse–in other words our favorite type of role to play: that sweet spot where we’re confident we can hit it out of the ...

“Acting is all about…” As you go through your life as an actor, there are so many things you come to find out acting is “all about.” Every instructor, coach, director, agent, manager, and even advice columnist will at some ...

If you’ve been acting long enough, I’m sure you’ve heard the expression: “ There is no acting without auditioning.” The goal for all of us is to get to a place where we don’t have to audition but can be ...

As actors we are lucky in so many ways. We get to play for a living, we get be creative, and we get to hang out with fun, vivacious people. And of course, we get to revel in the adrenaline ...

If you’ve been around the acting business for any length of time, you probably have that one friend who can memorize lines seemingly without any effort at all. Hand them a Shakespeare script on Tuesday, they’re off-book by Friday–and they ...

From Film4  – Various famous actors and actresses tell us what inspires and drives them when taking on new roles. Actors: Keira Knightley Tom Hanks Anne Hathaway Ben Stiller Judi Dench Michael Fassbender Natalie Portman Leonardo DiCaprio Saoirse Ronan Andrew ...

“The theatre is an operation with the scalpel, I think movie acting is an operation with the laser.” Michael Caine teaches in this documentary the art of movie acting to five young actors, who perform scenes from “Alfie”, “Deathtrap” and ...

Probably for as long as acting has existed, there has been a common trope regarding how dumb actors are. The dizzy blond, the vacuous pretty boy–there are jokes about these stereotypes dating back to Shakespeare’s time and likely beyond. And ...

As actors we have a relatively fun job. We get to dress up, play pretend, use our imaginations, and generally speaking, we get to hang out with fun, engaging, outgoing and artistic people. That’s the good part of the challenge. ...

We talk a lot about auditioning and the challenges actors face in going out for “job interviews” on a weekly or daily basis. And most actors would probably agree that the one aspect of the audition that is probably the ...

The more you’re around this strange business of acting, the more you learn that far from being a unfathomable, inexplicable activity–a sort of alchemical event that takes place behind a curtain–there are actually nuts and bolts techniques to help us ...

“And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover, To entertain these fair well-spoken days, I am determined to prove a villain, And hate the idle pleasures of these days.” –William Shakespeare, “Richard III” For a certain breed of actor, one ...

“I knew that if I wanted to be all I could be, I would have to go to the U.S. It took three years to get the accent right.” –Idris Elba If you’re like me, tuning in to watch “The ...

Acting is of course performing in such a way as to mimic genuine human emotional life, and one of those emotions is sadness. But despite the huge, diverse and rich tapestry of human emotions, many actors are hung up on ...

If you’ve ever participated in a talk-back after performing in a stage show, you’ve surely experienced this: you’re up there, seated on stage, sweaty, elated and still bathed in the glow of the post-performance high. You’re not only willing, you’re ...