I think so often you can come out of drama school and get thrown in the deep end.
I’d just come out of drama school, didn’t get anything, had to move back in with my parents and do a night-time cleaning job.
After graduating from flares and platforms in the early 1970s, I started drama school wearing a pair of khaki dungarees with one of my Dad’s Army shirts, accessorised by a cat’s basket doubling as a handbag. Very Lady Gaga.
I went to drama school at New York University.
I went to a masterclass with Jonathan Pryce who said that a successful actor is not a famous actor, it’s an actor who acts. And I have been incredibly fortunate to have worked constantly from the moment I left drama school, so I achieved what I set out to do. I am an actor.
My first paid role was my first job out of drama school, which was ‘Just William.’ It was a BBC TV show. I played Ethel.
Playing athletics, playing a lot of different sports, going to drama school… I was one of those kids who wanted to do everything, so I ended up being pretty average at everything.
‘McLeod’s Daughters’ was my first regular job out of drama school, and my first full-time role. That was great because I learned a lot, in terms of working in front of the camera.
We did a lot of that in drama school: intellectualising and maybe justifying your position. ‘I am a thinking actor and I have thought this through’ – well, just do it. I much prefer the doing aspect.
As I got older, I auditioned for drama school and shocked myself by getting in.
I felt quite confident – when you come out of drama school you feel like you’re on top of everything. I always tell people to go to drama school even if they’ve already done movies or whatever because the way you encounter content is so different.
At drama school I learned the Stanislavski technique, which uses sentimental memories and bits of your past to put real emotion into the scene.
When I came out of drama school, I was in a shared house in Sydney.
When really you’ve gone to drama school and rep and then you’ve come to London and gone to auditions and you’ve worked, solidly, for years. But that all gets forgotten.
You can’t punish the middle classes for going to drama school – you need to punish the education system and the associative governments for devaluing the arts.
I read ‘Backstage’ a lot when I first was unleashed into the world from drama school. And what was great about it was that if I was using it or not, it was just nice to know what was happening in my community.
It’s a basic tenet you learn at drama school. If you’re playing someone evil, you can’t make an objective moral judgment. You’ve got to get inside the character and empathize as much as possible.
I love film, but it’s funny going to drama school for three years, where you spend most of your time training for theatre, then coming out and just doing films.
I don’t watch anything of mine much. I haven’t gone to drama school, or college, either. I just like to watch other actors in action. I learned so much from working with De Niro. I’d be in a scene with him where I was supposed to be acting, and I was just watching.
I’ve done loads of things people have never seen – dramas on BBC4 and plays upstairs at the Royal Court and the Bush – and because I didn’t go to drama school, they gave me an education.
I think if I had come out of drama school and been an instant Hollywood superstar, I would be taking long, leisurely holidays.
I came from drama school, and it’s a group of 18 people working together in every single production and splitting up the roles for three years, so I am very much about the team.
I started acting when I was young, and I didn’t go to drama school. It was always something that I did alongside going to school and being a normal person.
In the next five years, I’d absolutely love to do theater. I went to drama school and that’s where the focus lies. I’d definitely like to do that before the fear sets in.
A lot of the films now are more focused on the visuals than on the actors. I think all directors should go to drama school.
But I didn’t really enjoy my secondary education that much, probably because I am a very physical person and don’t enjoy sitting at a desk all day. I just dragged myself through GCSE and A Levels, so it suited me very much to go on to drama school, which was very active.
I’ve been acting since I was 5 years old, from primary school to secondary school, did training at drama school, which was the big thing for me because they trained me, put me out into the industry.
At drama school we were encouraged to keep fit and healthy, but not to bulk out. We were told to stay lithe to allow our bodies to morph when we’re playing various parts. Running is ideal for this, especially when I needed a lean look for the Channel 4 drama ‘Cucumber.’
In drama school, I learned I wasn’t as good as I thought I was. But I loved stage combat, and I knew that would pay the bills.
You go to drama school, and the people you revere and admire are those who work on the London stage, and you hope that’s a world that you’ll be able to break into and do enough occasional television and small film work to eventually get to the point where you’re paying the bills.
I wasn’t accepted the first time I tried to get into drama school. I said, ‘I’ll give this one more shot… and if that doesn’t work, I won’t bang my head against this painful brick wall.’
I knew I wanted to be an actress, but I hadn’t ever really told anyone. I’d always got quite good grades, so people assumed I would go and do a ‘normal’ job. My dad took me to my first audition for drama school and picked me up without anyone knowing, really.
The wonderful thing about drama school is that it stretches you in a way the industry doesn’t.
I have been out of drama school for 13 years, so there are 13 years’ worth of graduates behind me.
I left school the day I turned 16, the earliest day I legally could. Determined to follow a life on stage, preferably with some dance connection, I applied for and won a place at the local drama school. I was on my way.
One of the first plays I ever did was at the Royal Court Theatre in London; it was the first play I got after drama school.
I always loved stage combat at drama school so I can’t wait to get on set and kick some evil monsters into the next dimension!
When it comes to rugby, I’m a Welshman through and through. I’m a huge fan; I’ve played rugby since I was seven. Unfortunately, I had to quit when I went to drama school because it doesn’t really go hand in had with being an actor.
I did three years training for stage in drama school.
I went to drama school. I’m classically trained; I studied Shakespeare, blah blah blah. But I always preferred to do Oscar Wilde, or Shakespeare’s comedies over his dramas.
Before I left home for drama school in England, my father took me outside one night and told me that wherever I was, the moon would shine on both of us. Months later, walking in London, I’d look at the moon and feel his love. Now I’ve shared the ritual with my own kids.
You can’t come out of drama school and think, ‘It’s all going to be amazing.’ You have to expect to work in a bar for at least five years and be a waitress for maybe two!
I hadn’t been to drama school. I hadn’t been to university and acted there. I had no qualifications behind me.
My family weren’t actors, and we didn’t know any actors. It wasn’t even something I was aware you could do as a job. I thought you had to be a Redgrave or a Barrymore before you were allowed to go to drama school.
I love filmmaking, but I decided to go to drama school because I thought that when I’m 60 and looking back on my life, if acting hadn’t been a part of it, I would hate myself.
I got introduced to yoga in drama school. It’s now a mainstay in my life, ever since I got instructor certification at a teacher-training intensive. I even occasionally guide an intimate class of friends and family, but mostly the training was to serve and deepen my own practice.
My next step must be to go to drama school. Well, I get into drama school, so I did that.
I got my Equity card and agent before I ever went to drama school.
I actually went to drama school at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music & Drama in Glasgow, so I stayed in my home town the whole time. However, I see more of my friends now than I did then. It’s strange.
I was taught at my drama school that it’s not what you feel, it’s what you make the audience feel.
There’s never been a game plan, and I suppose I’ve had an uneasy relationship with my ambition. Someone who had been in my year at drama school once said to me that I was terrifyingly ambitious back then. Which was not at all what I felt at the time – I felt paralysed with shyness, though that evaporated.
There are lots of people in the world who do have the advantage of going to a good drama school and just decide that they want to be actors. There’s nothing wrong with an untrained actor; they have to get their training somehow, they have to learn.
I wouldn’t have been able to go to drama school when I was 19. I don’t think I was even conscious of life… I was like a zombie. But when I finished uni’ I just realised… just go and do it, stop being a knob.
My first paying job was a in a production of Neil LaBute’s ‘Bash: Latter Day Plays’ at the Union Street theater in Borough. I played the ‘Medea Redux’ character. That was my first job out of drama school. I can’t remember how much I got paid. I’m sure it was pennies.
