The Acting Career Tool You Might Be Overlooking: A Great Coach

You can spend years training as an actor without anyone really explaining where an audition coach fits into your professional career. You know you should take classes and continue developing your craft. But when should you work privately with a coach? Is coaching primarily for actors who are still learning how to audition? And as you become more experienced, should you need one less?

A great coach serves a different purpose than a great class. Knowing when to bring in that outside perspective—and when to trust your own preparation—is part of developing a professional audition process.

Acting Class and Acting Coaching Aren't the Same Thing

An ongoing acting class gives you room to develop your craft over time. You can stretch into material you might not normally be cast in, work on technique, identify habits, take risks, and keep your instrument active even when auditions are slow. The work isn't necessarily tied to an immediate professional result.

Audition coaching is more specific. You have an audition, callback, or particular piece of material in front of you. A coach can help you mine the text, clarify your intention, explore choices, identify something you may be missing, or make sure the work you intend to communicate is actually coming through.

A good audition coach also has a perspective you can't easily develop working alone. They're seeing many actors prepare auditions and callbacks, so they have a much broader view of the level of work being done. They see how specific strong auditions have become and how the best self-tapes can feel almost like mini films: the character is fully realized, the circumstances are alive, and you're watching a scene rather than an actor demonstrating an audition. That perspective can raise the level of your own preparation because your coach knows when the work is technically solid but could still be more specific, full, or engaging.

Depending on the coach, that outside eye may extend beyond the acting itself. Someone who works regularly with self-tapes may help you adjust a performance for the camera, run the material with you, or catch a technical or presentation issue that's distracting from the work.

Taking class regularly doesn't eliminate the usefulness of coaching. They serve different purposes, and both can remain valuable throughout a professional career.

Experience Doesn't Make an Outside Eye Obsolete

As you gain experience, you should become more self-sufficient. You develop stronger instincts, a more reliable process, and a better understanding of your own work. But career ownership doesn't require doing every part of the job alone. Part of building a professional career is knowing which collaborators make your work stronger and when to use them.

You may be too close to the material to see what's reading, or the tone or genre may be unfamiliar. You may understand the scene but haven't found the most specific way into it yet. If you've auditioned for a similar kind of role several times without getting the response you'd like, another perspective may also help you identify a pattern you aren't seeing yourself.

A coach isn't there to supply talent or make your choices for you. Ideally, they help you get more specific about the choices you're already making and challenge you when the work can go further.

So, When Should You Work With a Coach?

If you're beginning to build a professional acting career, establish relationships with audition coaches early. Don't wait until you receive what feels like your first "big" audition.

Some of the auditions that look smallest on the page can be surprisingly difficult to prepare. A one-line co-star may give you very little dialogue while still requiring you to create a complete person who belongs naturally in the world of the show. You have fewer words with which to establish relationship, circumstance, point of view, and behavior. An experienced coach can help you learn how to create a rich, specific character without trying to make the role artificially bigger than it is.

Working with a coach early can also help you develop your own audition process: how to break down sides quickly, mine the text for the information you do have, make specific choices with limited material, adjust those choices, and recognize when you're ready to tape. The goal isn't to make coaching a requirement for every audition. It's to help you build a preparation process you can increasingly trust.

At the beginning, try working with at least three or four coaches. Auditions can arrive with very short turnarounds, and good coaches get booked. Having several people you've already worked with means you're not researching strangers or hoping your only coach has an opening when a same-day or next-day audition arrives.

They don't all have to serve the same purpose. You may find one person particularly helpful with television material, another with comedy, commercials, musical theatre, or another area of your work. You're building a small professional resource list rather than searching for one coach who has to be everything to you.

As your experience grows, you probably won't need to coach every audition. But coaching can still be valuable when you're working in an unfamiliar genre or style, preparing a particularly complex role or callback, or auditioning for an opportunity where you want another experienced set of eyes on the work. If the same issue keeps appearing across multiple auditions, that's another good reason to bring someone in.

There may also be periods when you're auditioning frequently enough that regular coaching is useful. Rather than waiting for one unusually important audition, you can use that time to sharpen your process and notice habits across multiple pieces of material.

The useful question isn't whether you should be able to do the audition without help. Ask whether the right coach would make your preparation for this particular opportunity stronger. Sometimes the answer is yes. Other times, you'll know what you want to do and should trust yourself.

The Right Coach Should Help You Make Stronger Choices

The coach who is invaluable to another actor may not be the person who brings out your best work. Pay attention to what happens during the session. Does the coach understand the medium and material you're preparing? Do they help you investigate the text rather than simply hand you choices? Can you make their adjustments without losing your own instincts? Do you leave with stronger ownership of the work?

Relevant experience matters, too. Someone who understands the demands of on-camera auditions may be useful for different reasons than someone whose expertise is musical theatre or commercial work. You don't need a specialist for every audition, but you should understand what someone actually coaches and whether that experience matches the work you're pursuing.

Most importantly, the audition should remain your work. Coaching becomes less useful if you're trying to reproduce someone else's performance of the scene or searching for a supposedly "correct" choice. There are too many variables in casting to treat coaching as a formula for getting a callback or booking.

The goal is to walk away better prepared to do your job.

Find Your Coaches Before You Urgently Need Them

The worst time to begin researching coaches is the night you receive an important audition with a short turnaround. Build these relationships when there isn't an emergency. Take a session, see how the coach communicates with you and what happens to your work, and try someone else. Over time, you'll develop a small group of people you trust and learn whom you want to call for what.

When you're researching a coach, look at their background, professional experience, areas of expertise, format, availability, and rates. Recommendations from actors you trust can be extremely helpful, but someone else's favorite coach won't automatically be the right fit for you.

Build a Professional Support System That Actually Supports You

Career ownership doesn't mean doing every part of your acting career by yourself. Teachers, coaches, reps, photographers, readers, fellow actors, and other collaborators can all contribute different kinds of expertise. The important part is knowing what you need from each relationship.

As you gain experience, you'll get better at recognizing which auditions you can confidently prepare on your own, which would benefit from another perspective, and which person in your coaching network might be especially helpful for that particular job.

You don't need to graduate from coaching. You need to know how to use it.

Looking to expand your professional support system? Explore acting schools, classes, and coaches through Up-To-Date Actor to research training and coaching options that fit your goals, market, and current needs.