How Do You Prepare to Become an Actress?

Series Summary

An actor is a person who suppresses or augments aspects of their own personality in order to reveal and illustrate the motivations and aspects of a character's personality. Acting has its roots in ancient Greece and, over time, has become one of the most compelling and revered artistic enterprises. Actors must possess a range of skills including: singing, dancing, imagination, clarity of speech, physical expressiveness, vocal projection and the ability to emulate emotional and physical conditions. In this free video series on acting, an accomplished and award-winning actress offers insider advice. Find out how to prepare for an audition by memorizing monologues, songs or dance routines. Learn to exercise an actor's most valuable tools, the voice and the body, and get tips on finding a great acting agent. Consult this theatrical guide to break into the acting business.

Video Transcript

"I must forsooth be forced to give my hand opposed against my heart, unto a mad brain rudesby. Mad brain rudesby? I'm going to have to look that one up. Good old Shakespeare. You know Shakespeare said all the world is a stage. I'm Janice Creneti, director of the Girlstories Theater Project in Tampa, Florida. And I'm here to talk to you today about how to become an actress. I've been acting for over twenty-five years myself, so I've learned a few things along the way. Well part of it depends on exactly what kind of actress you want to be. There's film, there's live theater and you can do straight plays, you can do musicals. There's voice over work, and even now, acting on the internet. But no matter what kind of acting you do there's some basic skills that every actor needs to be as prepared as possible. First thing that you need to think about is knowing your instrument, and for actors, the instrument is your voice, and your body. Two very important components to acting well, no matter what form you're doing. So with your voice there's things that you need to think about like projecting. You have to be loud enough to be heard, especially if you're in a live setting. Articulation, you've got to speak slowly and clearly. You want people to understand what you're saying, you're responsible for helping them follow the action of the story. Once you're comfortable with those basics then you can start to think about things like accents, having accents prepared can really help when you're trying to audition for specific roles where an English accent might be required for instance, or a southern accent. Once you've got the voice part down, it's also time to think about body movement. You see, movement is a very important way of showing your character onstage. I always think about that when I'm developing my character, how does my character stand, how does my character sit, how does my character walk, if they're happy or if they're sad. It does a great job of conveying how you're really feeling. Movement classes can be really helpful for an actor because they focus specifically on how you use movement to perform onstage. Now if you're thinking about musical theater, then you also want to add singing lessons and also dance lessons. A lot of musicals will expect you to be able to sing, dance and act. That's what they call a triple threat. So classes of any of those things can be very helpful. Once you know the basics of how to actually be an actor, you have to find a place to act. Look into joining a local acting network, find out what's in your area, it could be children's theater, it could be dinner theater, it could be community theater. Or if you're in school, you can get involved at the school level. No matter what, acting is a great time, but you want to be prepared when you go to that audition. So I'm Janice Creneti and this is how to prepare to become an actress."