Bad Acting Advice: actors and comedians share the WORST advice they ever received
As an actor, one of your biggest challenges will be taking people’s advice and figuring out what works, what’s crap, and what’s the difference.
To help you sift through the crap a bit more easily, we’ve collected some of the worst acting advice ever given to professional actors, comedians, and directors.
From “Give up on your dreams” to “Only use your trauma and nothing else to inspire your performance,” we’ve got the best of the worst here!
Acting as a Career
“Here’s the worst advice I ever heard, from Michael Shurtleff and various other acting coaches: ‘Often actors ask me if I think they should go on trying to be an actor. I have the same answer for everyone who asks: If you have a choice and could reasonably be happy doing something else, by all means go at once and do something else.’
Actors love to be pretentious and glorify their "single talent" when this is clearly an outdated myth, seeing how many talented multi-hyphenates there are.
You don't have to be a prodigy at acting and acting alone to have a successful career, and you shouldn't discourage other people from pursuing their dreams because of your own limited mindset.
And how self-absorbed do you have to be to paint it as the hardest career ever?
Sure, it's an unconventional career path full of uncertainty, financial instability, and rejection, so it's not the easiest career. It takes a lot of dedication. But most jobs are hard in their own way. Choose your hard.
At least you get to tell stories for fun, do something you're passionate about, and focus on your growth.
It's nowhere near as hard as being a surgeon saving lives, or an abattoir worker in a slaughterhouse, or god forbid, a stage manager.
-Yena Han, Actress and Hand Model (view her work on her website)
“I don’t think I’ve ever been given outright ridiculous acting advice. At most, there may have been things said that didn’t exactly resonate with me, but thankfully I had good teachers and mentors to where I was able to take something good from each of them.
I’ve definitely been around actors where I didn’t agree with their approach or their methods, but they weren’t necessarily telling me that’s how I should do it. So I don’t think that counts as “advice”.
So I’ve resorted to this story, which is not that fun, and not even directly related to acting, but I’m gonna tell you anyways to give you an answer.
I was back at my high school after my first year of college and watching a soccer game as an alum when I ran into one of the parents I knew.
He was asking me about school and I told him that while I was studying engineering at the time, I was really considering switching to something like music or theater.
And he said more or less, ‘Listen Juan. You need to stay focused. Finish your degree, get a good job, earn a living. Then you can do whatever music or theater things you want in your free time as a hobby.’
And maybe it was exactly at that moment that I knew I needed to have a career in the arts. Because that was most definitely not how I wanted to live my life.”
-Juan Sebastian Cruz, actor/musician/circus artist (view his youtube channel)
Methods
“Anything to do with method acting. If you are required to BECOME something in order to be an actor, then you are a bad actor in my opinion."
- Jake LaViola, standup comic/designer
“Not necessarily to me directly, but I watched graduate school actors bend to the mercy of certain teaching styles, and go from a state of play to a state of discipline and punishment while acting.
Not only did it seem to remove a lot of creativity and interpretation because of the training's prioritization of certain aesthetics and certain values, but it also meant that they were constantly in their head about acting choices rather than being in the moment.
I understand that in traditional theater consistency and repetition is key, but the way that a lot of actors are handled is just like a lot of specialists in the field of music and academia, in which white supremacist patriarchal values dominate the discussion even despite the progress it seems that we've made, and the result is an inherent violence that limits the art form in order to ensure power structures remain intact and unchallenged.
I saw a bunch of people coming to grad school excited for their futures, and leave utterly destroyed in their passions.
Sure, they now knew how to talk the talk and walk the walk, I can't discount their professional development, especially considering professionalism is itself a power construct.
However, what's the point of refining a craft if at the end of the day you hate it? What's the point in engaging an art if your creativity is stifled and fit into a form rather than explored and pushed further for its possibilities?
This is a hot take, but it's my most fervent believe that the reason so much American acting feels stilted is because of these systems.”
-Roby Johnson, dramaturgy MA/experiential theater practitioner (follow on insta)
“This is potentially best/worst/funniest all-in-one.
In college I was in an acting class, grad-student taught, and one day we had a sub. The class had been heavily focused on Strasberg and fairly academic.
By contrast, with the sub, we were given the great secret to powerful acting: always assume you have the biggest dick in the room.
I've never shared this advice to any of my own students, but I have been incredibly tempted to share it at least with folks who were AFAB and are cis because... it feels absurd and brilliant and why not?”
-Steven Starling Saltsman, comedy writer/teacher/theater owner (see their work at Pronoia Theater)
“People say it’s lying. Acting feels more real than anything and completely exposes you and anyone who tells you to just lie is going very surface. I think that’s an American superficial approach to a serious art.
And when they say pull from your real wounds. Yeah, don’t do that.
You don’t have control over traumas, and usually people can tell when someone hasn’t healed from something and shouldn’t be crying while ordering ice cream as a character.
It’s not as much about you as doing the work and separating your truth from acting.”
-Reb Johnson, actress/comedian (follow on insta)
“When I was studying acting there used to exist (seemingly) two camps: the Strasberg school of sense memory and the Meisner school of imagination. And I remember in each school a sort of dogma of “use your imagination!” as opposed to “go into your memory and become…” bla bla bla.
I started in Meisner and would secretly access memories because well, it was easier. Then in my Method training I’d slip into imagination without telling anyone.
No, you don’t end up on a shrink’s sofa if you go into memory (I mean, I may lie on that sofa for other reasons but never from acting, plus you could do way worse than lie on a therapist’s sofa, so…) and you’re not cheating if you imagine.
So my answer is the worst thing I heard was that there was a “right” way to do acting. Rubbish.”
-Barbie Insua, art director/designer (follow on insta)
Stagecraft
“The most insufferable are the people who say not to rehearse because it will kill your ability to react.”
-Aaron Garret, comedy writer/teacher/theater owner (see his work at Pronoia Theater)
“As a performer in the background, just mouth the word ‘watermelon’ over and over and it will look like you are talking. No! It just looks like you are saying watermelon over and over for no reason.”
-Jake LaViola, standup comic/designer
“I disagree with making arbitrary rules up just for the sake of structure.
It can often backfire and make things more awkward. Please make sure your improv bits serve the audience!”
-Ellie Griffiths, improviser/actor
Working With Directors
“When a director tells you to mimic exactly what they are doing. ‘Just do it like this…’ Granted, sometimes that’s all you can do for some actors, lol.”
-Jake LaViola, standup comic/designer
“I’ve never taken an acting class, but on sets I’ve worked on I’ve overheard directors say some pretty dumb shit.
Like one time after a take a director said, “That was perfect, just give me more,” for when they wanted more emotion/intensity, and then every take they kept saying just the word “more” until the performance was comically over the top.
Love when a director says that something is perfect and then proceeds to note how what just happened was in fact not perfect.”
-Thomas Magnuson, writer/director (follow on insta)
Booking Work
“One person said I was very generic-looking, and I was like… well I can’t really change what I look like.”
-Kelly McInerney, standup comic/sketch comedy writer (follow on insta)
“Because my voice is higher, I’ve been told that I need to lower the register of my voice for me to actually book roles. Which obviously made me self-conscious more than anything.
In reality you are really supposed to just embrace the qualities you have and use them to your advantage!”
-Libby Smith, improv comedian/actress (view her work on her website)
"Do something bold and stand out!
Anything is better than nothing. Just get yourself seen."
"Only do what they are looking for."
"Maybe you should try to get on Netflix."
"Well since you haven't 'made it' by now, maybe you should just stick with your other work."
"You look like this and should only go for those kind of roles."
"You don't have that within you. That's not who you are."
-Kristin Mothersbaugh, actress/spiritual healer (follow on insta)
Sexism >:(
“At the Groundlings School, I was told women aren’t funny, so that was dumb.”
-Reb Johnson, actress/comedian (follow on insta)
What bad advice is your favorite? Have you heard any other horrible advice? Let us know in the comments!
Now for some good advice…
Soon, we’ll be releasing the How to Nail Your First Audition guide for beginner actors!
This book is great if you’re:
New to acting and not sure where to start looking for auditions
Not feeling confident in how you prepare for and handle auditions
Working without an agent to find stage and TV gigs
Any of these describe you?
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