9 Things Actors Should Know About Whether You Need Acting School
Drawn from what is actually said on camera, so you can decide whether to
spend the 16:10 watching it.
Working actors disagree, and both camps are working
Asked directly whether professional training is necessary, the answers split. Transgender supermodel Arisce Wanzer has no acting education at all beyond a runway coach named Junior Jean and says if they want you, they want you. Others credit conservatory programs. Nobody in the group could point to one required path.
Alexandra, who did the two year program at the New York Conservatory of Dramatic Arts, says school is not necessary but is useful the way tools are useful. The more tools in the box, the more ways you have to solve a problem when one shows up on set or in the room.
A Juilliard graduate says the single most valuable part of the training was the group of colleagues he built. When you hit stretches where you cannot tell up from down, you have people who have known you long enough to see straight through you. The voice, speech and movement work is what he digs back into when he is not working.
Class gives you the people who tape you at midnight
Beyond craft, class builds the support system that reads for you when your agent sends an eleven page audition at 7 PM that is due by 9 AM. Acting coach Leslie Kahn's line quoted here: if you consider yourself an actor, working or not, you should be acting every day. Treat it like the gym.
Pick a school that also teaches producing and editing
One actor argues it is increasingly necessary to be multi hyphenated, meaning able to produce, pitch, write and edit your own content. If you are choosing a program, choose one with electives in those skills rather than acting technique alone.
For commercials, drop the theater training and study improv
Griffin Burns, a full time voiceover and commercial actor of almost six years, took classes specific to those genres rather than a conservatory. He warns that theater training can hurt you in a commercial room, where they want to believe the person was plucked off the street. If you study one thing for commercials, make it improv.
Gregory James Cohen names a six week commercial class with New York casting director David Katie as his most useful training. The students kept trying to do something to make the copy come alive. The takeaway was that your personality showing through is enough. You do not have to add anything on top.
Build the character off the page, then let it become play
One actor uses a boilerplate exercise from New York teacher Pete Mattaliano: list where the character was born, their age, favorite and least favorite wine, favorite and least favorite book, drawn from the script. Another says the work has to be done far enough in advance that on the day you are not thinking about lines or marks and it turns back into play.
Better to be completely off the mark with a fully formed character than to walk in and wing it. If you have not decided who the character is, you get found out the moment you speak. Treat the casting as a work session, not a life event. You will almost always not get the role, so have fun with it. Also, invest in real voice and speech training. Actors obsess over hair and look and forget how they sound.
- "Captain", what do you think? Professional training or no professional training? This is the question for every young actor who's coming to Los Angeles. (upbeat music) - I feel like people ask me all the time, "Do you need to go to acting school to be an actor? Do I need to go to college or university to study theater, to be a working actor?" while I could just give my opinion, I felt like I should branch out and get everybody else's opinion. So I called a bunch of friends and I brought them in here and some people send in tapes, and they're all working actors, people who've been out here for years, some in New York, some in LA, but they're all hardworking and really great people. And I hope that their perspective kind of helps you guys out as you're making this decision to be an actor. I asked them a bunch of questions and I asked the same question to myself. I hope you guys like it. And yeah, get excited. Let's do it. - [Will] Do you think it is necessary to have professional training to be an actor?
- This is tricky. - That question opens up a can of worms. - Every actor has to do what's best for them. - Hi there, I'm transgender supermodel, Arisce Wanzer. Don't believe me, you can Google it. I have zero acting education, except for being in the closet for about 17 years. Which is pretty good 'cause you get to study people's mannerisms and what you're not supposed to do all the time. So I notice what people wear, how they move, their gait, how they walk, I've been studying all that stuff for years. I did have a professional runway coach, his name was Junior Jean, that was years ago and he taught me how to walk down the runway and how to be the best model ever, creating angles on camera. What else? I've had... I guess I've had no real training.
I'm funny because I was bullied as a child, so I wasn't like super attractive, so I had to develop a personality which really helped me later on down the line. I do not think it's necessary to have professional training to be an actor because you just don't. If they want you, they want you and if they don't, they don't. You think Tiffany Haddish ever took an acting class? She didn't. Anyway, I'm gonna go on record as to say she didn't. I'm gonna say she was a really great comedian that got popular and that's how some people just make it. Some people make it through nepotism. (upbeat music) - Hey, hey, my name is Griffin Burns and I'm a full time voice actor and commercial actor based in Los Angeles. I've lived here for almost nine years and I've been working full time in the industry for about five and a half, almost six. Done literally thousands of voiceovers, if you watch anime or play video games or listen to the radio, watch TV, you've probably heard me. - Okay, I need to clarify something.
Whoever said you need to be a tourist to appreciate the city clearly never spend time with superheroes. - Then I voiced kids' toys, here's one right here. This is "Movi", he was in target last year, maybe you got to for your niece or nephew or your children. - Hi, I'm "Movi", let's have some fun. - Hi, I'm "Movi". - [Movi Click one of the buttons on my tummy to choose a game. - Come down "Movi". Do you think it's necessary to have professional training to be an actor? I'd say largely my answer would be yes. I work specifically in voiceover and commercials and I took classes for both of those genres of acting. I wasn't in a conservatory program, I didn't study theater for years and years, but I did take some classes. Aside from those classes was on the job and at my agent's office auditioning for voiceovers or with friends or practicing here at home in front of the camera or in the booth here recording.
Also people have different levels of natural ability, you know, some people acting comes a little easier to them than others. So you might not need as much training or you might need more. And there's certain genres of acting that I'd say training might hurt you. Commercials is one, and you kind of have to let your theater training go when you go to a commercial audition. They're looking for real people, they wanna believe that the people in commercials are plucked off the street. Of anything for commercials, improv is the one thing that you should study. - Hi, I'm Alexandra, I've been in LA for seven years, so long. So I do a lot of commercial work, I'm like typical commercial actress. And then I've had a couple of other gigs, a TV show called "Salem", I'm recurring on that, and a movie called "Mothers and Daughters" with some pretty cool people, Sharon Stone and Selma Blair. And just other little tiny gigs like that. - [Will] What acting education do you have? - I did a two year program in New York city, the New York Conservatory of Dramatic Arts, which was like any drama school, full of drama.
Okay, do I think it's necessary to have professional training to be an actor? I don't think it's necessary, there are plenty of people who do it without, however I do think it can be super helpful. It's kind of like filling up your toolbox with a bunch of tools, the more tools you have, the more ways you have to solve a problem when you have one, so I think it can be incredibly useful. - Here's my feeling about good acting education. "Juilliard" was great for me, it's not for everybody. There's certainly no defined way to become an actor as we know from all the biographies we've read. So for me, the most important thing about the acting education was the group of friends that I made or colleagues more specifically. In our business, we inevitably go through times when we kind of don't know up from down, so to be able to go back to people that you've known for a really long time is super key. And also to have a tool belt of things, whether that's a sort of a voice and speech thing or a movement thing, just something that you can kind of dig back into. It's been very, very important for the times when you're not working. So you have something to look back on, so you have to hold on to. My classmates are still people in my life that I sit down together with and they immediately see right through me.
Yeah, I hope that's helpful to somebody. - My education, what worked for me is from the time I was a little kid, like from the time I could just say words and form a sentence, I was on a stage. My parents put me on a stage where I sang and I danced and I acted, and I did it inside school systems and I did it outside of the school system. I did it in like professional theater, I did it in dinner theater, I did it in community theater. There was never a time where I wasn't acting. - I've shot and minced words with you for long, I am challenging you sir to a duel. - I accept. - (chuckles) Are you serious? - Then when I sort of grew up, I rejected all of that and became a journalist. For every hour that I interviewed someone who was involved in either some... something dramatic, something funny, something real, something authentic, I spent eight hours for every hour I interviewed somebody in the edit room, watching them frame by frame. I learned to study people and how they reacted to real things, and from that I gauged my own sort of...
my own acting sort of meter, what felt real to me and what didn't feel real to me. And I applied all that to what I do when I'm on TV. You know, there are levels of authenticity in each genre, whether it be drama or comedy, and whatever that thing is for you, it should just never feel like acting. - I think it's increasingly necessary to be multi hyphenated in this industry, which means to be versatile enough to be able to produce, pitch, write and edit your own content. So go to a school that has those electives, where you can learn those skills. As far as acting school goes, I believe that it's very, very important. Even if you are a good seasoned actor, you need to go to an acting class if you're not already working to keep what we call the craft sharp. As one of my favorite acting coaches, Leslie Kahn has said, "If you consider yourself an actor, whether you're working or not, you should be acting every day." It's like going to the gym, the more you work out, the stronger and more prepared you will be when you book that breakout role. Not to mention you meet people in class and those people will become your support system and friends, and the people that will put you on tape last minute. Because your agent tells you your 11 page audition is due by 9:00 AM the next day, even though you just got it at 7:00 PM after your third or fourth happy hour tequila - (groans) I wanna die. - Is it necessary to have training to be a professional actor? I would say yes and no.
Taking classes and having life experiences can kind of get you to develop yourself as a person and therefore develop you as an actor. So I think that you need a certain amount of perspective and life experience and a little bit of acting classes never hurt. - [Will] Were there any classes or lessons that stood out to you? - Hey, my name is Gregory James Cohen, I've been acting in the industry for a little over six years. I just recently moved to Los Angeles from New York, I started doing mostly theater after college, and then I got into film television. I've been on CW's "Dynasty", I've been on "The Inspectors" on CBS. I've done a few feature films, one that's releasing this August, 2019. About a priest that turns into a dinosaur and fights crime and ninjas, and it's called "The VelociPastor", and I play "The VelociPastor". The biggest thing that stuck out for me in acting classes was actually commercial class with a casting director that I took for six weeks, his name is David Katie in New York. And it was just doing stuff like this, sitting on camera, talking to the camera and thinking that we had to do something, you know, to like, you know, create, make the copy come alive. But the lesson that he taught us was you are enough, just you being you and just like letting your personality shine through that is enough. You don't have to be anything else.
Do that and you'll be good. - [Will] Aint that the truth? My goodness. - Yeah. - Hey Will, sorry I'm doing this from my car. I had an audition and a meeting in Santa Monica today actually, so hopefully that's pertinent to what you're doing with this video. I think that was an aha moment for me where it's like, do your work, know when your work is done, then when you get there, it has to move. For it to feel really good and fulfilling I think it has to move into that part of the brain where you're not thinking about it so much. We're not forcing it, you're just kinda... you're not worried about your lines, you're not worried about hitting your mark, you just... you've done it enough, rehearsed enough where you get to that point where you're like, "Ah." And it becomes play again. But I don't think you can get to play if you haven't done the work.
Sometimes you can, sometimes you can wing it and get away with it, and probably some people are better at it than I am. But I can only really get to play on the day if I've done the work to allow me to get there and to let go and not feel panicked about whatever the minutia. - I had a teacher in New York, Pete Mattaliano, who taught us what he called a boiler plate, which I used for all of my characters that I play now, when I get to like dive in. Where you go through and solely on what you get in the script, you list everything from where is this person born? What was their age? What's their favorite kind of wine? What's their least favorite kind of wine? What's their favorite book? What's their least favorite? So really defining those specific characteristics about them, but without making it up. - Most people are so fixated on the way they look and their hair when they come to Los Angeles, they forget that they sound like shit. Meaning their voices sound like shit.
And I do believe that there is a benefit for everyone to somehow undertake formal, experienced expert vocal training and speech. I'm old fashioned that way, I've been through like probably too many auditions than I wanna count, maybe like thousands. But what I've learned is that if you don't know who the character is and you haven't made up your mind what your take is and what your commitment is to the character, then you will be found out the moment you start talking. So if you don't come in with a fully shaped character, and I'm talking about all the things that exist off the page, then they'll know and you're not going to get the part. But it's better to be totally off the mark with a fully shaped, formed character than it is to just go in and try to fake it and wing it. And two, I think I've learned that if you are nervous in a casting, the folks across on the other side of the camera are just as nervous as you are, because you're making them nervous. I think you go in and you try to not put too much importance on the casting moment. It is just a work session with you and the producer going with what you think is right. Deliver the material confidently and friendly, in a friendly way but don't think about how it will alter the course of your life before you walk in the door. "If I get this role, God, I'll be able to pay my electric bill. If I get to buy a new car, I'll be able to afford a house." All of that pressure essentially becomes like, just like a tire that is ready to burst. And usually people burst in the room in front of the people and everybody feels uncomfortable and it's just weird.
You just have to basically just treat it like work, it's just another day at work, a job. Where you went in, you read for the folks, if you get the part great, but most of the time you will not get it. In fact, almost all of the time, you will not get the role. So might as well have fun with it, might as well just sort of look at it as just another day in the life of being an actor, because that's really what we do, we audition. - Were there any classes or lessons that stood out to me? I think probably one of the most impactful things that happened to me, I remember I was in Acting Two, which was the name of the class in college. So I was performing the scene and I dropped the pen on the ground. And I remember kind of being like, "Oh no, what do I do? Do I pick up the pen, do I not pick up the pen? What does--" And my acting professor just goes, "What would you do in real life if you were having a conversation and you dropped a pen on the ground?" You would pick it up. It seems like such a small thing, but that translates into everything that you do. It gives you so much freedom when you realize that like, just be a person.
I got to act on my impulses and be alive in that moment, like a real person. So if you drop a pen during a scene, pick it up because that's what you would do. Or if it's not what you would do, then don't pick up that pen. It's how the character would respond to said thing happening. (upbeat music) - [Will] So if you could do it all over again, what would you do differently? - Like, do I have regrets? - The big question. - I like to say, I live with no regret. ♪ Came through dripping ♪ Aquafina I'm sipping ♪ Fifteen kept a weapon on me ♪ Flow make digits ♪ I mind my business ♪ Stack chicken like what its gon' be ♪ Like what its gon' ♪ Crew in the cut AU on us ♪ Rev Run when I tell a bitch peace ♪ Love is love ♪ Adios ♪ BeenDope BeenDope ♪
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