Graduating from the Ultimate Acting Programme Luke Smith had multiple agents after him and secured a role on the BBC feature film Jawbone and starring Ray Winstone and EastEnders.
He contacted Brian on Facebook and said this:
“Just finished my first feature film. Jawbone, staring good old Ray Winston, Ian McShane, Johnny Harris and Michael smiley….. O yea And me. lol” – Luke Smith
Graduating from the Ultimate Acting Programme Kamilla Alnes secured major roles with 20th Century Fox (American Horror Story) and Comedy Central (I Live With Models).
This is what she said about the programme:
“After taking the one-year program, I decided to move to LA to pursue acting over there. I still live in LA, and have a wonderful manager and a great agency!
Last year I booked a recurring guest part in American Horror Story and spent several months on set with wonderful actors like Kathy Bates, Matt Bomer and Lady Gaga.
I recently booked my first series regular and am at the moment I’m back in London filming season 2 of a TV show for Comedy Central called “I Live With Models”.
I just wanted to reach out and thank you both!
I had such a wonderful experience at your school. It opened my eyes to the fact that my dream actually was possible to follow.
I’m forever grateful!” – Kamilla Alnes
If you want to be a great actor you need commitment. Sounds simple, right? But what does it actually mean? For most truly great actors, commitment is about really immersing yourself in a role, finding a way to stop “acting” and start giving the audience something real. That means not having to pretend to feel the emotions required by the script, but actually being able to feel them on demand.
This is the goal of method acting.
Method actors often go to extreme lengths to find the right headspace for their characters. They will put themselves through the same experiences their character goes through so that they don’t have to pretend to know how their character feels – they will have lived it. This sort of commitment to character is what separates so many elite actors from the rest, which is why it’s not surprising that over 80% of Oscar-winning actors this century have been method actors.
The following are just some of the most famous examples of actors going the extra mile to really inhabit their characters. If you want to up your acting game and kick-start a professional acting career, you could do a lot worse than following their example.
Mickey Rourke – Iron Man 2
Mickey Rourke’s performance as tragic villain Ivan Vanko in Iron Man 2 is one of the most memorable things about the film – not a bad achievement when starring opposite the ever charismatic Robert Downey Jr.
Rourke’s character starts the film having spent years in a Russian prison, so what did the actor do to prepare? He went to Russian and spent time in a prison himself. Now, an actor of Mickey Rourke’s standing does not need to spend time in a Russian prison in order to get roles. The reason he does it so he doesn’t have to pretend, he doesn’t have to use his imagination, he’s “been there and done that”.
Natalie Portman – Black Swan
Natalie Portman won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her role in Black Swan playing an elite ballet dancer who slowly loses her grip on reality. Portman prepared for the role with over a year of ballet training, including spending 6 months training 5 hours a day, six days a week.
As well as getting her into the right physical shape for the role, Portman said:
You are constantly putting your body through extreme pain, so you get that understanding of the self-flagellation of a ballet dancer.
As noted, Portman’s commitment paid off and she was rewarded with an Oscar for her efforts, earning herself a renewed respect both within the industry and with the public for her acting abilities.
Robert De Niro – Taxi Driver
Robert De Niro has had many memorable roles over the years, but one of the first that helped to cement him as Hollywood royalty was 1976’s Taxi Driver. For his role as the eponymous taxi driver, Travis Bickle, De Niro prepared by working 12-hour shifts as an actual cab driver in New York.
This is just one example of the lengths De Niro has gone to over the years for his craft – a level of commitment that has earned his 2 Academy Awards and a further 5 nominations. Robert De Niro’s ability to truly become his characters is why he is one of the most successful actors working today with his most recent Oscar nomination coming in 2012 for Silver Linings Playbook.
Anyone who’s still getting that kind of recognition 38 years after their first Oscar win has to be doing something right! And this is the kind of consistency you can achieve with method acting.
Hilary Swank – Boys Don’t Cry
How many people can say they’ve put in two Oscar-winning performances by the time they turned 30? Hilary Swank is one, having won the Best Actress Oscar for both 1999’s Boys Don’t Cry and 2004’s Million Dollar Baby.
Although her preparation for Million Dollar Baby was gruelling, it was the work she did as the transgender Brandon Teena in Boy Don’t Cry that really made people sit up and pay attention. In preparation for the role Swank spent months going out disguised as a man to get as close as she possibly good to experiencing what it’s like to enter the world as a transgender person.
Swank cut her hair, bound her breasts and stuffed her underwear with socks to create the illusion, saying:
It really showed me how much we use our identity and our gender to communicate.
Daniel Day-Lewis – Last of the Mohicans
Daniel Day-Lewis is one of the best known method actors of our time and with good reason – he really knows how to commit to a role. The tales of the extremes he goes to in preparing for a part are legendary, but perhaps most amazing is how we went about getting into character for Last of the Mohicans.
Day-Lewis spent 6 months living alone in the wilderness in Alabama tracking, hunting and skinning animals for food. Supposedly the actor was so committed he refused to eat anything he hadn’t killed himself as he didn’t want to undermine the authenticity of his preparation.
This dedication to character has earned Daniel Day-Lewis the Academy Award for Best Actor 3 times, a feat no other actor has yet achieved. With his first Oscar coming for 1989’s My Left Foot and the most recent for 2012’s Lincoln, Day-Lewis is another actor who proves that method acting provides a formula for long-term acting success.
Want to know how to achieve real acting commitment? Our One Year Ultimate Acting Programme will teach you the attitude and skills you need. The course starts in October and the deadline for applications is 8th June with auctions taking place on 15th June. There are only 16 places available, so don’t delay as we are always inundated with applications each year. Need to find out more? Please feel free to get in touch.
If you want to be a great actor you need commitment. Sounds simple, right? But what does it actually mean? For most truly great actors, commitment is about really immersing yourself in a role, finding a way to stop “acting” and start giving the audience something real. That means not having to pretend to feel the emotions required by the script, but actually being able to feel them on demand.
This is the goal of method acting.
Method actors often go to extreme lengths to find the right headspace for their characters. They will put themselves through the same experiences their character goes through so that they don’t have to pretend to know how their character feels – they will have lived it. This sort of commitment to character is what separates so many elite actors from the rest, which is why it’s not surprising that over 80% of Oscar-winning actors this century have been method actors.
The following are just some of the most famous examples of actors going the extra mile to really inhabit their characters. If you want to up your acting game and kick-start a professional acting career, you could do a lot worse than following their example.
Mickey Rourke – Iron Man 2
Mickey Rourke’s performance as tragic villain Ivan Vanko in Iron Man 2 is one of the most memorable things about the film – not a bad achievement when starring opposite the ever charismatic Robert Downey Jr.
Rourke’s character starts the film having spent years in a Russian prison, so what did the actor do to prepare? He went to Russian and spent time in a prison himself. Now, an actor of Mickey Rourke’s standing does not need to spend time in a Russian prison in order to get roles. The reason he does it so he doesn’t have to pretend, he doesn’t have to use his imagination, he’s “been there and done that”.
Natalie Portman – Black Swan
Natalie Portman won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her role in Black Swan playing an elite ballet dancer who slowly loses her grip on reality. Portman prepared for the role with over a year of ballet training, including spending 6 months training 5 hours a day, six days a week.
As well as getting her into the right physical shape for the role, Portman said:
You are constantly putting your body through extreme pain, so you get that understanding of the self-flagellation of a ballet dancer.
As noted, Portman’s commitment paid off and she was rewarded with an Oscar for her efforts, earning herself a renewed respect both within the industry and with the public for her acting abilities.
Robert De Niro – Taxi Driver
Robert De Niro has had many memorable roles over the years, but one of the first that helped to cement him as Hollywood royalty was 1976’s Taxi Driver. For his role as the eponymous taxi driver, Travis Bickle, De Niro prepared by working 12-hour shifts as an actual cab driver in New York.
This is just one example of the lengths De Niro has gone to over the years for his craft – a level of commitment that has earned his 2 Academy Awards and a further 5 nominations. Robert De Niro’s ability to truly become his characters is why he is one of the most successful actors working today with his most recent Oscar nomination coming in 2012 for Silver Linings Playbook.
Anyone who’s still getting that kind of recognition 38 years after their first Oscar win has to be doing something right! And this is the kind of consistency you can achieve with method acting.
Hilary Swank – Boys Don’t Cry
How many people can say they’ve put in two Oscar-winning performances by the time they turned 30? Hilary Swank is one, having won the Best Actress Oscar for both 1999’s Boys Don’t Cry and 2004’s Million Dollar Baby.
Although her preparation for Million Dollar Baby was gruelling, it was the work she did as the transgender Brandon Teena in Boy Don’t Cry that really made people sit up and pay attention. In preparation for the role Swank spent months going out disguised as a man to get as close as she possibly good to experiencing what it’s like to enter the world as a transgender person.
Swank cut her hair, bound her breasts and stuffed her underwear with socks to create the illusion, saying:
It really showed me how much we use our identity and our gender to communicate.
Daniel Day-Lewis – Last of the Mohicans
Daniel Day-Lewis is one of the best known method actors of our time and with good reason – he really knows how to commit to a role. The tales of the extremes he goes to in preparing for a part are legendary, but perhaps most amazing is how we went about getting into character for Last of the Mohicans.
Day-Lewis spent 6 months living alone in the wilderness in Alabama tracking, hunting and skinning animals for food. Supposedly the actor was so committed he refused to eat anything he hadn’t killed himself as he didn’t want to undermine the authenticity of his preparation.
This dedication to character has earned Daniel Day-Lewis the Academy Award for Best Actor 3 times, a feat no other actor has yet achieved. With his first Oscar coming for 1989’s My Left Foot and the most recent for 2012’s Lincoln, Day-Lewis is another actor who proves that method acting provides a formula for long-term acting success.
Want to know how to achieve real acting commitment? Our One Year Ultimate Acting Programme will teach you the attitude and skills you need. The course starts in October and the deadline for applications is 8th June with auctions taking place on 15th June. There are only 16 places available, so don’t delay as we are always inundated with applications each year. Need to find out more? Please feel free to get in touch.
If you want to be a great actor you need commitment. Sounds simple, right? But what does it actually mean? For most truly great actors, commitment is about really immersing yourself in a role, finding a way to stop “acting” and start giving the audience something real. That means not having to pretend to feel the emotions required by the script, but actually being able to feel them on demand.
This is the goal of method acting.
Method actors often go to extreme lengths to find the right headspace for their characters. They will put themselves through the same experiences their character goes through so that they don’t have to pretend to know how their character feels – they will have lived it. This sort of commitment to character is what separates so many elite actors from the rest, which is why it’s not surprising that over 80% of Oscar-winning actors this century have been method actors.
The following are just some of the most famous examples of actors going the extra mile to really inhabit their characters. If you want to up your acting game and kick-start a professional acting career, you could do a lot worse than following their example.
Mickey Rourke – Iron Man 2
Mickey Rourke’s performance as tragic villain Ivan Vanko in Iron Man 2 is one of the most memorable things about the film – not a bad achievement when starring opposite the ever charismatic Robert Downey Jr.
Rourke’s character starts the film having spent years in a Russian prison, so what did the actor do to prepare? He went to Russian and spent time in a prison himself. Now, an actor of Mickey Rourke’s standing does not need to spend time in a Russian prison in order to get roles. The reason he does it so he doesn’t have to pretend, he doesn’t have to use his imagination, he’s “been there and done that”.
Natalie Portman – Black Swan
Natalie Portman won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her role in Black Swan playing an elite ballet dancer who slowly loses her grip on reality. Portman prepared for the role with over a year of ballet training, including spending 6 months training 5 hours a day, six days a week.
As well as getting her into the right physical shape for the role, Portman said:
You are constantly putting your body through extreme pain, so you get that understanding of the self-flagellation of a ballet dancer.
As noted, Portman’s commitment paid off and she was rewarded with an Oscar for her efforts, earning herself a renewed respect both within the industry and with the public for her acting abilities.
Robert De Niro – Taxi Driver
Robert De Niro has had many memorable roles over the years, but one of the first that helped to cement him as Hollywood royalty was 1976’s Taxi Driver. For his role as the eponymous taxi driver, Travis Bickle, De Niro prepared by working 12-hour shifts as an actual cab driver in New York.
This is just one example of the lengths De Niro has gone to over the years for his craft – a level of commitment that has earned his 2 Academy Awards and a further 5 nominations. Robert De Niro’s ability to truly become his characters is why he is one of the most successful actors working today with his most recent Oscar nomination coming in 2012 for Silver Linings Playbook.
Anyone who’s still getting that kind of recognition 38 years after their first Oscar win has to be doing something right! And this is the kind of consistency you can achieve with method acting.
Hilary Swank – Boys Don’t Cry
How many people can say they’ve put in two Oscar-winning performances by the time they turned 30? Hilary Swank is one, having won the Best Actress Oscar for both 1999’s Boys Don’t Cry and 2004’s Million Dollar Baby.
Although her preparation for Million Dollar Baby was gruelling, it was the work she did as the transgender Brandon Teena in Boy Don’t Cry that really made people sit up and pay attention. In preparation for the role Swank spent months going out disguised as a man to get as close as she possibly good to experiencing what it’s like to enter the world as a transgender person.
Swank cut her hair, bound her breasts and stuffed her underwear with socks to create the illusion, saying:
It really showed me how much we use our identity and our gender to communicate.
Daniel Day-Lewis – Last of the Mohicans
Daniel Day-Lewis is one of the best known method actors of our time and with good reason – he really knows how to commit to a role. The tales of the extremes he goes to in preparing for a part are legendary, but perhaps most amazing is how we went about getting into character for Last of the Mohicans.
Day-Lewis spent 6 months living alone in the wilderness in Alabama tracking, hunting and skinning animals for food. Supposedly the actor was so committed he refused to eat anything he hadn’t killed himself as he didn’t want to undermine the authenticity of his preparation.
This dedication to character has earned Daniel Day-Lewis the Academy Award for Best Actor 3 times, a feat no other actor has yet achieved. With his first Oscar coming for 1989’s My Left Foot and the most recent for 2012’s Lincoln, Day-Lewis is another actor who proves that method acting provides a formula for long-term acting success.
Want to know how to achieve real acting commitment? Our One Year Ultimate Acting Programme will teach you the attitude and skills you need. The course starts in October and the deadline for applications is 8th June with auctions taking place on 15th June. There are only 16 places available, so don’t delay as we are always inundated with applications each year. Need to find out more? Please feel free to get in touch.
If you want to be a great actor you need commitment. Sounds simple, right? But what does it actually mean? For most truly great actors, commitment is about really immersing yourself in a role, finding a way to stop “acting” and start giving the audience something real. That means not having to pretend to feel the emotions required by the script, but actually being able to feel them on demand.
This is the goal of method acting.
Method actors often go to extreme lengths to find the right headspace for their characters. They will put themselves through the same experiences their character goes through so that they don’t have to pretend to know how their character feels – they will have lived it. This sort of commitment to character is what separates so many elite actors from the rest, which is why it’s not surprising that over 80% of Oscar-winning actors this century have been method actors.
The following are just some of the most famous examples of actors going the extra mile to really inhabit their characters. If you want to up your acting game and kick-start a professional acting career, you could do a lot worse than following their example.
Mickey Rourke – Iron Man 2
Mickey Rourke’s performance as tragic villain Ivan Vanko in Iron Man 2 is one of the most memorable things about the film – not a bad achievement when starring opposite the ever charismatic Robert Downey Jr.
Rourke’s character starts the film having spent years in a Russian prison, so what did the actor do to prepare? He went to Russian and spent time in a prison himself. Now, an actor of Mickey Rourke’s standing does not need to spend time in a Russian prison in order to get roles. The reason he does it so he doesn’t have to pretend, he doesn’t have to use his imagination, he’s “been there and done that”.
Natalie Portman – Black Swan
Natalie Portman won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her role in Black Swan playing an elite ballet dancer who slowly loses her grip on reality. Portman prepared for the role with over a year of ballet training, including spending 6 months training 5 hours a day, six days a week.
As well as getting her into the right physical shape for the role, Portman said:
You are constantly putting your body through extreme pain, so you get that understanding of the self-flagellation of a ballet dancer.
As noted, Portman’s commitment paid off and she was rewarded with an Oscar for her efforts, earning herself a renewed respect both within the industry and with the public for her acting abilities.
Robert De Niro – Taxi Driver
Robert De Niro has had many memorable roles over the years, but one of the first that helped to cement him as Hollywood royalty was 1976’s Taxi Driver. For his role as the eponymous taxi driver, Travis Bickle, De Niro prepared by working 12-hour shifts as an actual cab driver in New York.
This is just one example of the lengths De Niro has gone to over the years for his craft – a level of commitment that has earned his 2 Academy Awards and a further 5 nominations. Robert De Niro’s ability to truly become his characters is why he is one of the most successful actors working today with his most recent Oscar nomination coming in 2012 for Silver Linings Playbook.
Anyone who’s still getting that kind of recognition 38 years after their first Oscar win has to be doing something right! And this is the kind of consistency you can achieve with method acting.
Hilary Swank – Boys Don’t Cry
How many people can say they’ve put in two Oscar-winning performances by the time they turned 30? Hilary Swank is one, having won the Best Actress Oscar for both 1999’s Boys Don’t Cry and 2004’s Million Dollar Baby.
Although her preparation for Million Dollar Baby was gruelling, it was the work she did as the transgender Brandon Teena in Boy Don’t Cry that really made people sit up and pay attention. In preparation for the role Swank spent months going out disguised as a man to get as close as she possibly good to experiencing what it’s like to enter the world as a transgender person.
Swank cut her hair, bound her breasts and stuffed her underwear with socks to create the illusion, saying:
It really showed me how much we use our identity and our gender to communicate.
Daniel Day-Lewis – Last of the Mohicans
Daniel Day-Lewis is one of the best known method actors of our time and with good reason – he really knows how to commit to a role. The tales of the extremes he goes to in preparing for a part are legendary, but perhaps most amazing is how we went about getting into character for Last of the Mohicans.
Day-Lewis spent 6 months living alone in the wilderness in Alabama tracking, hunting and skinning animals for food. Supposedly the actor was so committed he refused to eat anything he hadn’t killed himself as he didn’t want to undermine the authenticity of his preparation.
This dedication to character has earned Daniel Day-Lewis the Academy Award for Best Actor 3 times, a feat no other actor has yet achieved. With his first Oscar coming for 1989’s My Left Foot and the most recent for 2012’s Lincoln, Day-Lewis is another actor who proves that method acting provides a formula for long-term acting success.
Want to know how to achieve real acting commitment? Our One Year Ultimate Acting Programme will teach you the attitude and skills you need. The course starts in October and the deadline for applications is 8th June with auctions taking place on 15th June. There are only 16 places available, so don’t delay as we are always inundated with applications each year. Need to find out more? Please feel free to get in touch.
Whether you have an upcoming acting job or a pending audition, you need to be prepared, and part of that preparation should be constructing your own acting ‘process’. A process will ensure you can perform at your highest level every time, and bring the same skill to each role you take on. With over 80% of ‘Best Actor’ Academy Awards being won by method actors in the last decade, it is certainly worth considering making use of a few method acting techniques when it comes to creating your process.
Inspired by the work of Stanislavsky in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, method acting is one of the most talked about group of acting techniques. Championing naturalism, and helping performers create realistic characters by truly connecting with them, it is used by actors many of the worlds leading actors.
The Basic Elements
So you’ve just received a new script, and need to know how to really perform this character to the best of your ability. The basic elements of your acting process could be as follows:
1. Analyse the role
- Go through the script thoroughly and fill in all the gaps on your character for a clear picture
- Define the character’s goals and objectives
2. Prepare psychologically and emotionally
- Make a connection with your character and try to imagine yourself in their situation, and react as they would to it (method acting techniques are helpful here)
- Find a way to identify with your character
3. Work out their movements and gestures
- Decide how your character would move and express themselves
- This may come naturally if you have delved deep enough into the psyche of your character
4. Decide on vocal characteristics
- The vocal characteristics of your character may already be hinted at by the script (e.g. regional accent)
- You should always try to allow a natural voice to form, and get feedback from others on the project
When it comes to an acting process, arguably one of the most important aspects is getting a deep understanding of your character, which is where method acting comes into its own. Mastering a few core techniques can really come in handy.
Using Method Acting to Your Advantage
You don’t have to be a ‘method actor’ to benefit from its practices, and while it might be worth researching further if you think it could work for you, you can get a taste of it by trying out some of its key techniques.
1. The ‘Magic if’
The ‘Magic if‘ was one of Stanislavsky’s key ideas, and it is simple enough to understand. You must imagine yourself as your character, in so far as you’ve had their upbringing, and find yourself in their circumstances. You can then ask yourself a question unrelated to the story-line, such as ‘what I do if that man started arguing with me‘, and work out your character’s true and most likely reaction to such a situation. It will help you unlock things about your character that you never could know if you stuck exclusively to what is written in the script.
2. Affective Memory
Affective memory is a widely known and used technique, and in basic terms is the act of using your own experiences to bring humanity and truth to the pain and suffering of your character. You parallel your own life with the character arc of the role you are playing. Take time to sit and reflect on your past experiences and try to find a few that will work in the context of the story. Remember the sensory elements of the experience: how things looked, the smells, the sounds and the tastes. Relating your real memories to the role will allow for a genuine response to be triggered, creating a more natural performance. There is a risk with this technique however, as it may unearth painful or traumatic memories. As a result it is recommended that you try it for the first time in a professional method acting course.
3. Sense Memory
Sense Memory is all about creating an effective and believable emotional recall in performance. In other words, giving an authentic response to imagined events in the story, such as the death of your character’s mother. This is achieved by unlocking your own sense memory, and using it to your advantage when it comes to the performance. Say for example you are playing a mourner at a funeral. Think about the memories you may have from a similar situation, and try to remember what your five senses experienced. Could you hear a strange sounding bird, for example? Or did you sit down on something uncomfortable? Focusing on a specific sense memory can help to trigger responses and help you give a much more authentic portrayal. After training yourself to work this way, it should become a lot easier and natural for you to use the technique for ongoing work.
Crafting your process carefully is important, and method acting can help you to truly realise your potential as an actor. To find out more check out my book, The Ultimate Guide to Method Acting – You could also sign up to my FREE 7 day email and video acting course.
Confidence is hugely important for an actor. You need to have a lot of self-belief if you’re going to put yourself out there and find work, but even more fundamentally you need it when acting if you are going to convince others with your performance.
While it’s certainly true that some people seem more naturally confident than others, it’s not just down to a mix of genetics and having the right upbringing! Whoever you are, no matter how naturally confident you feel, you can learn to believe in yourself as an actor if you take the right steps.
Know your stuff
People often say you have to “fake it ‘til you make it”, but wouldn’t you rather not have to fake it? This is very much the philosophy behind method acting – we don’t want you to fake anything, we want you to learn how to unlock your potential and harness what’s already inside you to create something real.
This is how you increase your confidence as an actor too. The goal is not to learn how to mimic what you imagine confidence looks like! We want you to put the work in to gain the skills and experience so you will feel genuinely confident in your abilities. After all, if you know you’ve got the chops, why wouldn’t you feel confident about it?
Faking confidence (if you can pull it off) might well open a lot of doors for you, but when you’re up on stage or in front of a camera, if that confidence isn’t based on something real, it will soon show. Being exposed for a fraud won’t do anything for your long term confidence, so make sure you really know what you’re doing and your confidence will continue to grow with each success.
Be prepared
There’s a reason the Scouts have “be prepared” as their motto. They believe that if you always know “the right thing to do at the right moment” you will be able to cope with any situation. This is the root of confidence – believing you can handle any situation you find yourself in. So how do you do that as an actor?
Preparing for an audition or performance includes the obvious things, like learning your lines, researching your role and looking the part, but there’s more to it than that. Method acting means learning how to produce genuine emotion on demand, so that whatever feelings you are required to portray as an actor, you know you can call them up when needed.
Having a repeatable process for doing this means you can deliver the goods every time and you’re not leaving anything to chance. Method acting training teaches you how to develop that repeatable process so you can always be prepared for whatever is required of you as an actor.
Get experience
All the training in the world will…help you a lot, actually! But it’s also important to get out there and get experience. Building confidence means having the courage to go outside your comfort zone and show yourself that you can not only survive out there, but thrive.
For an actor, this means getting out there and actually acting in front of people over and over until it no longer seems so scary. However nervous you might be before a performance, getting through it and to the applause at the end is guaranteed to help build your acting confidence.
Whether you have to start small in local theatre productions or amateur short films or are lucky enough to get professional work right away it all helps. Putting yourself out there and doing it, succeeding and then doing it again is the way to build genuine self-belief that will help propel you to each next step in your career.
Learn from the best
Copy successful people and you’ll have the confidence of knowing that what you’re doing works. After all, if something works for Robert De Niro or Christian Bale, why wouldn’t it work for you? Knowing you are using a winning formula is one of the surest ways to boost your self-confidence as an actor. And what is that winning formula? Why, method acting, of course!
80% of Oscar winning actors this century have been method actors, which really ought to tell you something. And if they can do it, so can you! These Academy Award winners have provided a blueprint for acting success that you can learn to emulate. Do that and you’ll be absolutely justified in believing you have the necessary skills to give a great performance. And once you know that, then guess what? Everyone else will be able to see it too!
Gaining confidence in yourself and your acting abilities certainly isn’t an overnight job, but with the right help and the willingness to learn and apply yourself you can become as confident as anyone.
Looking for a way to really build acting confidence? Why not apply for our 2016-17 Ultimate Acting Programme starting in October? The deadline for applications is 8th June and auctions are taking place on 15th June. Need to know more? Please feel free to get in touch with your questions.
In this episode, Brian and Joe sit down to chat about honing your rehearsal skills, with tips and guidance based on their own personal experiences – from the first read of a new script, to the read-through with the cast, through to the rehearsals – to make sure you rehearse like a pro.
11 things you will learn about:
• The script: What to look for when you first read it through
• Understanding your character’s journey
• Get scribbling: The importance of making notes on the script
• Gut reaction – Why that first script read is so important
• Lessons from the Greats: How De Niro and Hopkins do it
• The read-through – Why you shouldn’t over-prepare
• Permission to develop: Taking your hands off the flight controls
• Explore, Investigate, Create: Bringing a little flavour
• The impact of the “hidden culture” in a cast
• The rehearsal: Adding subtlety and colour – Layers
• The next level: Method Acting and sensorial improvisation
In this episode, Brian and Joe sit down to chat about honing your rehearsal skills, with tips and guidance based on their own personal experiences – from the first read of a new script, to the read-through with the cast, through to the rehearsals – to make sure you rehearse like a pro.
11 things you will learn about:
• The script: What to look for when you first read it through
• Understanding your character’s journey
• Get scribbling: The importance of making notes on the script
• Gut reaction – Why that first script read is so important
• Lessons from the Greats: How De Niro and Hopkins do it
• The read-through – Why you shouldn’t over-prepare
• Permission to develop: Taking your hands off the flight controls
• Explore, Investigate, Create: Bringing a little flavour
• The impact of the “hidden culture” in a cast
• The rehearsal: Adding subtlety and colour – Layers
• The next level: Method Acting and sensorial improvisation