There are lots of people who haven’t been to drama school who have great talent and can be discovered.
My life changed in 2005 on the day I met my wife, Tamzin. She was in a play called ‘Breathing Corpses’ with James McAvoy, one of my best mates from drama school. I knew who she was, and I’d fancied her quite a bit when she played Melanie Owen in ‘EastEnders.’
If I had a child, I wouldn’t let them go to drama school. At times, I was really unhappy there.
At drama school, we were taught to write down your dreams and carry them around in your wallet with you, and they’ll come true, but I didn’t do that.
Everyone else went to drama school, and that teaches you how to dissociate from your character. I don’t know any technique! I’m just acting by chance – and by connection.
I think I was about 18 before I decided I wanted to pursue acting. I went to drama school in Western Australia when I was 19.
Drama school taught me not to be precious.
I did a lot of stock before I even went to drama school. I sort of went in the back door of drama school and I had joined in a stock company to get my experience.
I went to drama school, where you learn to clown around a bit. You’re walking around in leotards every day for three years, and you’re taught clowning and mask work.
I went to drama school for three years, and the whole thing there is that hopefully you are introduced to a man called William Shakespeare who is the greatest of all time of all storytelling.
I was lucky enough to get into drama school in London back in 2005, and I was there for three years, and in those three years, we did a lot of theater. A lot of classical training.
I never went to drama school, but I did learn a couple of things along the way.
Drama school is really a forum for making a fool of yourself.
At the end of drama school, I made a contract with myself: I’d try acting for five years. I was 26. I had already spent eight years working in restaurants and gas stations. So I had seen enough small businesses to understand that that’s what acting is: a small business.
I applied to drama school when I was about 18 and didn’t have any luck anywhere. They basically turned me away and said I had a bit of growing up to do. I went back to Aberystwyth and did my growing up by spending eight months working in Peacocks.
I was a commercial girl. In drama school, I was a mediocre model occasionally to pick up some extra cash, and because clearly I’m not six feet tall, and I had baby weight, I would mainly just would do promotional stuff.
Maybe six months out of drama school, I was working at the Dundee Rep Theatre, I worked there for about a year, and I had an audition for the National Theatre of Scotland. I went into the audition room and when I came out I realized my fly was undone. I did this whole dramatic speech with my fly hanging low.
I trained as a singer before I was an actor. I was a kid singer, I went to theater and choir school, and then I got music scholarships throughout my education. And that’s what I was going to do. And then I took a left turn and went to drama school and became an actor.
When I was trying to find work after drama school in London, it felt like the same actors always got the plum roles, especially in television. We have a smaller market place, vastly fewer drama-producing networks, and they seem to compete for the same established names for those projects.
Those years between drama school and getting onto the stand-up circuit were pretty lean.
I started studying theater in school, and then I got into drama school at, like, 19, and it was a national drama school in Montreal, and so it was just you and nine other students for three years, and it was really intense.
I went to drama school in the U.K., where we did endless Chekov plays.
I started acting when I was seven. And I went to a local drama school which is very well-known in London. Because of that, I started getting jobs, and I worked all the time as a child, pretty much non-stop.
I was really pretentious in a sense and was like, ‘I’m going to drama school to learn the craft.’
Acting was a slow-burn thing. I found it was something I really, really liked doing, but it wasn’t until my third year at drama school that I actually thought, ‘Oh, right, I’m trained for this now; I’d better see if I can do it.’
Going to drama school was the start of my journey of discovery and getting to know myself.
For me, it’s all I’ve wanted to do. I did local plays and productions, local theater groups and anything that involved it. And then, I went and studied it, attended drama school and got my first lucky break in the theater in London, and just went from there.
I was discouraged at drama school, along with most of my peers.
Depending on what your interest in theater is, I always recommend working on plays. It’s a great way to be introduced to the field, and also a great way to be seen by agents and representation. I’m also a great advocate for studying acting at a drama school or a college.
I always assumed I would leave drama school and do ‘Lady Macbeth’ and all sorts of serious things. It just didn’t happen.
David Hayman gave me my Equity card and my first job out of drama school – the first person I really looked up to professionally.
Oh, I am not naturally gifted in dancing in any way! Stupidly, I didn’t go to those classes in drama school. I was like, ‘I don’t need that; I’ll never be dancing in anything.’
You’re just constantly outputting, and giving all you know so you don’t have time to look inside of yourself and to really reflect. The four years at drama school really gave me that time and space.
I was supposed to go to drama school and then go to New York and do theatre. But I grew up on all those fabulous movies and had read all the bold Hollywood books, and I thought I just had to take a look.
I’m interested in generating work for myself. I have trouble with this waiting-for-the-phone-to-ring lifestyle, especially after drama school, which was so creatively fulfilling.
I stayed a year in the sixth form and there was talk of Cambridge, but I wanted to go to drama school. At 17 and three months I went to the Old Vic School in London. This most remarkable and brilliant drama school lasted only six years because the Old Vic Theatre hadn’t the money to go on funding it.
I left drama school to do ‘The Book Thief’ – it was a real trip going straight from school kind of right into it, but I feel like the momentum of being in school put me in a good mindset as far as going into it as a learning experience.
I’ve – to be honest with you, I’ve never had an acting lesson. But I’ve been at drama school for 50 years.
I was pre-med, so I was going to go into the family business, more or less. But I came to my senses, luckily, and backed out, and decided to go to drama school.
Drama school is fundamentally practical. I didn’t write any essays, so I came out with a BA honors degree in acting.
In my last year of drama school, I was Abigail in ‘The Crucible’ and Nina in ‘The Seagull,’ and I did some Shakespeare with the RSC. That’s what casting directors saw me in, and I got put up for a lot of period drama auditions. I always get told I suit the costumes. I don’t think I have a very modern-looking face.
Back home, almost everything I did, I did in Hebrew. I went to drama school in Hebrew, my whole career was in Hebrew, and to switch languages was something that was fascinating and more complicated than I expected it to be, even though I’ve been speaking English since I could speak.
So I was determined to use my last two years in college doing something I thought I would enjoy, which was acting. And it was probably because there was girls over in the drama school too, you know?
I had this idea when I left drama school that if I could do everything, I’d always be working.
I grew up in Oldham and moved to Manchester and London. I didn’t go to drama school. I just did a B-Tech.
I didn’t go to drama school or anything, and I learned on the job. And it’s nice to have the chance to pretend to be other people. As a singer, though, I feel there’s much more of me in that. I’ve written the songs, I’m singing them, I’m exposing my feelings.
I left drama school in the early ’50s.
All they teach you in drama school is how to do stage fights and be a pain in rehearsals.
I failed the audition to get into drama school.
I went to NYU drama school, so I was a very serious actress. I used to do monologues with a Southern accent, and I was really into drama and drama school. And then, in my last year of drama school, I did a comedy show, and the show became a big hit on campus.
My goal has always been, from the time I was at drama school, about longevity.
In drama school, they do these big shows and period dramas, and I felt that none of those shows were representing me as a person, and I knew I wouldn’t be cast in any of those when I left school. I decided to write my own one-woman show, and that was called ‘Chewing Gum Dreams.’
