Archive for July 2016
Meryl Streep: A Method Acting Legend
Meryl Streep is often referred to as the best actress of her generation and not without reason. In a career spanning more than four decades, she has received 19 Oscar nominations (more than any other actor or actress in history) and won 3 times, once for Best Supporting Actress and twice for Best Actress.…
Read MoreWhat to Do When You Are “Blank”
Know your lines and don’t bump into the furniture. – Spencer Tracy, actor. Knowing your lines and remaining steady on your feet is easy for an acting veteran. If you’re starting out your acting career, however, you could have a case of blanking appear at any time. When it does, don’t worry –…
Read MoreActing Advice: Applying “The Method”
If you’ve enjoyed performances in a critically acclaimed piece of film or theatre recently, then it’s more than likely that you’ve seen method acting in action. The vast majority of successful actors are very good at applying the method to their performances, in fact, since the year the year 2000, more than 80% of…
Read MoreThe Method Acting of Robert De Niro
Robert De Niro is one of the best-known actors working today with a career spanning more than 50 years. He has won 2 Academy Awards, taking home the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for The Godfather Part II and Best Actor for Raging Bull. De Niro has also picked up a further 5 Oscar nominations,…
Read MoreActing Advice – Using the 80/20 Rule
There are hundreds of self-help books that promise to transform your life. The 80/20 rule, though, is too powerful for any book. It’s free to use and nearly universally applicable. Here, we’ve applied it to the art of acting. The rule sounds straightforward: 80% of results come from 20% of actions. While this is…
Read MoreWhat is the Lee Strasberg Method?
Born in 1901 to Jewish parents in what is now the Ukraine, Lee Strasberg’s family could not have guessed he would one day become the father of method acting in America. He and the still-renowned schools he taught at are famous for coaching the “rebel heroes” of cinema to their greatest heights: James Dean,…
Read MoreActing Career Advice: Are You About to Give Up?
From time to time I’m approached by old students or colleagues who gave up acting for a “normal” life. They will say to me: I shouldn’t have given up. I often think about what would have happened if I had stuck with acting. I miss it. That’s exactly it. To succeed an…
Read MoreConstantin Stanislavski: Techniques of a Legend
Born in Moscow in 1863, Constantin Stanislavski was to become perhaps the most famous figure in theatre. He not only devised the still-used ‘System’ of acting; he also sparked inspiration in every other teacher he met, launching a wave of System-inspired techniques across Europe and the U.S.; including the Method we use here at Brian…
Read MoreWhat is Method Acting?
What is Method Acting, and Why is it Important? When the media talk about method acting, they often like to focus on wild stories about actors pulling out their own teeth or losing large amounts of weight for a role, but this is not what method acting is. So, what is method acting? Well, fundamentally,…
Read MoreCase Study: Jack Nicholson’s Method Acting
Jack Nicholson has been acting professionally for nearly 60 years, having made his professional debut in 1958’s The Cry Baby Killer. He is one of the industry’s most decorated actors, having won three Oscars, two for Best Actor and one for Best Supporting Actor. With 12 Academy Award nominations to his name, Nicholson…
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