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How Your Brain Affects Your Acting
When thinking about how your brain affects your acting ability, the first, and perhaps most important, thing to keep in mind is that it is impossible to play an emotion. You might think this sounds strange; after all, we’ve all seen great actors laugh, cry, be joyous or get angry on screen. But the…
Read MoreHow to Develop Your Sense Memory
Sense memory is a concept used by everyone even loosely involved with method acting: Stanislavski, Strasberg, Meisner, Adler – the list goes on. It’s a core exercise used in affective memory, or emotional recall, but no matter your terminology or whose acting methods you subscribe to, it’s sense memory that is the key to…
Read MoreGetting Into a Creative Mindset
The Importance of Creativity If an actor doesn’t believe their scene is real, there’s a good chance the audience won’t either. This means that to be a good actor, you need to be convinced of the truth of your scene – to have a truly creative mindset. The good news is that your imagination…
Read More10 Famous Method Actors
People often ask us who our favourite method actors are, but with so many of Hollywood’s top actors relying on the Method, naming our favourites is extremely challenging. Did you know, for example, that over 80% of Best Actor Oscar-winners this century have been method actors? Ultimately, picking our favourites comes down to a…
Read MoreMeryl 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,…
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