How to Find Your Perfect Acting Coach

Business

May 13

Celebrity chef Julia Child once said, “You'll never know everything about anything, especially something you love.” This applies not just to cooking, but to acting as well. One of your many jobs as an actor is to keep studying the craft, and that starts with finding the right coaches.

A good coach or teacher can provide invaluable insight and guidance for beginning and advanced actors alike. They can point out bad or inefficient habits you may have picked up, help you uncover a new and exciting process, or show you important context you may have missed.

How do you know if a coach is any good, or if they’re not the right fit for you? Or even worse, if they’re scamming you. This post will walk you through how to figure out what to look for in a coach.

I’m a firm believer in knowing what your goals are before you pay for anything. If you don’t, it’s a bit like spending thousands of dollars on boat tickets because you want to move from New York to Sydney, Australia. It’s not the cheapest or best method of moving to a new country, but if instead you want to have a once-in-a-lifetime ocean cruise, it might be a worthwhile cost. Knowing what you want to achieve will ensure that you are only spending money on things that will actually serve you and help you narrow down your search. If you want to become a sit-com actor, spending money on a coach who has no experience with comedy isn’t necessarily as wise as, say, a clowning coach.

That’s not to say that other forms of acting aren’t worth investing in. Learning how to perform Shakespeare will absolutely help you book commercials, but if you don’t know what you want to get out of that Shakespeare class, you won’t necessarily know how to use those new skills in a different acting style. A word of caution though - I don’t recommend trying to learn more than two acting techniques or styles at the same time, as your brain will struggle to retain everything you’ve learned.

Doing a Google search for “Acting Coach” gives 313,000,000+ returns. Searching “Acting Coach Clown” narrows it down to 7,630,000 returns. You can see how getting specific makes it easier to find good options.

Set your learning goal:

To figure out what your specific learning goals are, ask yourself these questions before you start searching for acting teachers:

What do I struggle with the most right now?
What new skill do I want to learn that could help me with that?
What do I already know about this skill?
What are my expectations for how quickly I will learn this skill?
Do I have a deadline for when I need to learn this skill?
Do I need one on one coaching, or is a classroom or workshop a better format?
Do I need someone local, or should I find someone from the city I’m trying to break into?

You can then use these answers to create more specific search terms in Google, or better explain what you’re looking for to a peer. “I’m looking for one-on-one, in-person sessions with a coach to help me connect to and use my body for physical comedy” is going to give fewer, higher quality results than “I’m looking for a coach”.

Find coaches to research:

Now that you know what you’re looking for, you want to start vetting your options.

You can start with reading reviews online, using local market directories (such as Vancouver Actor’s Guide), and getting recommendations from peers. If you’re looking at a teacher who works out of an acting school, that school will likely have Google reviews. See if those reviews mention this teacher by name.

If they don’t have many reviews online, but do have a social media presence or website, read as much of their free material as you can (blog posts, lecture videos, insightful tweets, etc.). This will give you a sense of their philosophy and teaching style.

Researching coaches:

Once you’ve ruled out the coaches who have bad reviews, no online presence, or philosophies that don’t mesh with yours, you can dig deeper into your remaining options. By this point, you’ll only have a small handful of options to choose from, so this shouldn’t take too long.

If you couldn’t find answers to these questions on their website, send them an email. A good coach will answer promptly and openly. They won’t try cheap sales tricks to convince you they’re worth the price.

How much do they charge? Is it per session, per hour, or per course?
If it’s per course, how many hours of training is included in the price? Are there extra perks, like online communities or extra worksheets?
How do they accept payment?
If they’re not in your city, how will they communicate with you?
How many years of experience do they have?
Where did they learn their craft?
How often do they work in the field they coach in?
What is their philosophy of coaching/teaching?

Spotting a scammer:

If they don’t or haven’t actively worked in the industry they coach in, at best they’re bad at their job, at worst they’re trying to grift you. RUN. Good acting coaches and teachers also work (or worked) as actors. You wouldn’t learn how to drive from someone who’s never driven a car!

If they guarantee you’ll be working on big films after training with them, they’re either naïve or they’re taking you for a ride. RUN. No-one can promise this, ever. Far too many factors are at play in casting that a coach has no control over, such as the needs of the story, previous casting choices, and more, for anyone to make a claim like this.

If they require you to spend money with a specific vendor and/or buy their book before taking their class, they’re getting triple the money from you than what they’re worth. RUN. They can recommend photographers to work with or textbooks to read, but the only cost you should pay is their coaching fee.

Remember, listen to your gut. If, during the research process, you get a bad feeling about someone but can’t figure out why, they’re probably not right for you. Just don’t let that become an excuse to avoid getting training altogether.

Pricing - how to know when it’s worth it:

Rates will vary widely depending on discipline, market, availability, and the coach’s experience. This makes it difficult to establish a “normal” price for these services. Find quotes from a couple similar coaches so you can find the range your market has settled on. If you find a teacher who is charging $400 for two classes while another, more experienced teacher is charging $400 for four classes, you can figure out which one is worth it.

If you’re booking a coach to learn a skill for a specific job, such as an accent, avoid spending more on the coach than you would make on that job. For example, you’ve booked a role in a student film where you play someone with a Rhode Island accent. Spending $175 for a one-hour session to teach you that accent is not the best use of that $50 honorarium the students will pay you, but if you learn a generic US East Coast accent instead, you can use this new accent to book more work in the future. However, spending $300 on perfecting the Minnesotan accent for a 5-episode part you’ve booked in Fargo is absolutely worth the expense.

Finding the right teachers for you is a huge part of the actor’s journey, and it’s important to know how to do the research to find them. But once you’ve found someone you like, don’t just stop at them. Experiment with several different teachers, learn a wide variety of philosophies and techniques that you can pick and choose from. The more experience you have, the better. As you join more acting classes, your circle of peers will grow and you’ll get recommendations for different coaches in your market. You’ll learn more about who is good and who to avoid. You’ll get faster at setting learning goals and researching your options, and finding a coach will become second nature.

So, to summarize:

Ongoing training in many disciplines and styles will make you a better actor.
Set learning goals before you start researching coaches. Figure out what you’re trying to accomplish and why so you can narrow down your options to the most effective ones.
Don’t limit yourself to one style or skill to learn, but do focus on one or two at a time.
Use specific terms from your learning goal when doing a Google search to narrow down your results.
Read as many reviews as you can. Read as much of each teacher’s free content as possible to get a sense of who they are and how they teach. If possible, get word of mouth reviews from your acting peers.
If you can’t find answers to some important questions, ask the coach directly. A good one will answer honestly and not use it as an opportunity to “sell” themselves.
Don’t work with a teacher who has no experience in the field they coach.
Don’t work with a teacher who promises you’ll get certain roles.
Don’t work with a teacher who requires you to spend money on their book or specific vendors (such as photographers).
Trust your gut. If it’s too good to be true, it probably is.
Ask for several quotes to figure out the market average cost for coaches.
Don’t spend more money on a specific skill for a specific job than what the job pays you. If you do want to spend more money on a skill for a job, make sure the skill is useful for future jobs. You can spend money on a specific skill for a job that pays you more than the cost to learn the skill.
Experiment with several different teachers to learn many different techniques and philosophies. You can mix and match these to make a process that works for you.

How did you find your favourite coach? Let me know in the comments!

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About Me

Larissa is a professional audiobook narrator, voice over artist, and actor. With her home recording studio in Vancouver, B.C., she is able to spend her time doing what she loves most - becoming a conduit for stories that resonate with us.