What’s an acting coach for?

I rarely feel the need to justify my existence, people know they get common sense from me and if they pay for my time at the studio, they’re looking for common sense, no-bullshit coaching, from someone who offers practicable solutions to acting problems.

For beginners, an acting coach is someone who teaches them either privately or in group classes. They shepherd the acting student through the process of learning to act and help them to develop confidence in these new skills. As I said, this can happen in a group setting, or in a private acting coaching session, where the student can learn 1-2-1, or sometimes 2-2-1 (2 students to 1 coach) or 1-1-1 (1 student, 1 coach, 1 professional actor.)

For professional actors, my job changes. I don’t want to teach the student from the beginning. I can’t undo all their years of experience, even if it was poor experience, or bad habits. I generally work to assist professional actors, in the studio or on set, to improve their performance.

Why is a professional acting coach required? Very simple, as Anne Bogart recently said (thank you Emma) that the director should direct the production and the actor direct their own performance. Actors are good at doing, but not necessarily getting there, directors are great at vision and bringing a fresh perspective, but not necessarily actually good at working with actors. In fact, as we all know, many directors are pretty rubbish at speaking actor as a language.

The professional acting coach becomes an informed intermediary. They are not there to be any kind of power, they are someone that takes the director’s ideas and converts them into something the actor can do something with. Or they work alongside the actor to really understand the actable parts of a script, particularly a challenging part that seems outwith the actor’s own ability or experience. The director must be comfortable with an acting coach on set, and must be wise enough to realise that they’re not an expert on acting and that the actor could use someone to help them get the most out of themselves.

A professional acting coach is an integral part of the production process in the film and television industry, but often they are only employed by the actors, if they are feeling less than confident.

I would argue that the acting coach is the best friend of actor, director and writer, in fact, even producer, because they are the person charged with getting the absolute most out of the well-paid stars.

I understand that in the UK particularly, actors would feel worried, they might have to admit that they were not the masters of the universe, and that they still had stuff to learn and could benefit from an acting coach. But I assure you, if you work alongside an acting coach that you trust, and that is working with you for the benefit of the whole, they are just as useful as the batting coach, the swimming coach, the business coach, the football coach, the tennis coach – okay – you get the point.

But don’t expect them to be your BFF, they are there to challenge you to learn how to deal with difficult acting problems, and just like any other coach, they will use a range of tactics to get it out of you.

If you’re not getting the most out of yourself, maybe you should try an acting coach.