Want to be an actor/actress? Don’t know what to do? Then here is a great solution for you. In this article, we have picked some great books recommended by actors and actresses. These books will help you to learn more about acting. You can bring your skill to the next level.
Check out these amazing books.
Also Check:
Best Enneagram Books
Best Books on Astrology
Table of Contents
Actions: The Actor’s Thesaurus by Marina Calderone
Actors want action. They cannot act adjectives, they want verbs. This thesaurus of active verbs helps the performer to refine the action-word until they reach exactly the right one to make the action come alive.
An Actor Prepares by Constantin Stanislavsky
An Actor Prepares is Your first of Konstantin Stanislavski’s books on acting, followed by Building a Character and Creating a Role.
Stanislavski meant to publish the contents of An Actor Prepares and Building a Character as one quantity, and at the Russian language.
Audition by Michael Shurtleff
Michael Shurtleff has been casting director for Broadway shows Such as Chicago and Becket and Also for Movies like The Graduate and Jesus Christ Superstar.
His legendary course on auditioning has launched hundreds of successful careers. Now in this book he tells the all-important HOW for many aspiring actors, by the beginning student of behaving to the proven talent trying out for that chance-in-a-million function!
Improvisation for the Theatre by Viola Spolin
Viola Spolin’s improvisational techniques changed the very nature and practice of contemporary theater.
The first two editions of Improvisation for the Theater sold over 100,000 copies and inspired actors, managers, directors, and writers from cinema, television, film.
These techniques also have affected the areas of education, mental health, social work, and psychology.
Meisner on Acting by Sanford Meisner
This book, written in collaboration with Dennis Longwell, follows an acting class of eight men and eight women for fourteen months, beginning with the most basic exercises and end with changing and glistening scenes from contemporary American plays.
Through these webpages Meisner is pleasure –always empathizing with his pupils and urging them onward, provoking laughter, emotion, and developing technical command from his fees.
With an introduction by Sydney Pollack, director of”Out of Africa” and”Tootsie,” who worked with Meisner for five decades.
Respect for Acting by Uta Hagen
In the invitation of Herbert Berghof, Uta Hagen joined the faculty of the HB Studio in 1947. Ever since then, teaching has always been a challenge for her, in addition to for the many prominent actors whom she has helped to grow.
For several years, she’s been asked to write a book. Now, here it is: an account of her own battle with the methods of acting and according to her teachings.
A Challenge for the Actor by Uta Hagen
A Challenge for the Actor is a bestselling behaving magician from the actress and teacher Uta Hagen, used in many acting classes.
Taking the idea of”substitution” from her previous book, Respect for Acting, she renamed it”transference”.
Acting as a Business by Brian O’Neil
Together with”Acting as a Business,” Brian O’Neil changed the way actors viewed their field and their careers by providing them with straightforward guidelines on the best way to approach acting as a business.
Any number of books preached persistence, but O’Neil was the first writer who actually told actors how to be persistent. The book is such a very important resource that it won a place on”Entertainment Weekly”‘s exclusive collection of Industry Bibles.
Acting in Musical Theatre by Joe Deer
Acting in Musical Theatre is the only complete path in approaching a part in a musical. It’s the first to combine acting, singing and dance into a comprehensive manual, combining what have previously been handled as three distinct areas.
This book contains basic skills for beginner actors, practical insights for professionals, and even tips to help veteran musical performers refine their craft.
Drawing on decades of experience in both teaching and acting, the authors provide crucial advice on all facets of the profession, including:
Fundamentals of acting applied to musical theatre script, score and personality analysis personalizing your functionality turning rehearsal into performance acting styles in the musical theatre practical actions to a career.
Acting in Musical Theatre’s chapters split into easy-to-reference components, each containing related group and solo exercises, making it the definitive textbook for students and professionals alike.
Breaking Into Acting by David Powers
Have you ever wanted to break into acting, but didn’t know where to look? This informational guide, based on my own experiences and those of other actors, will provide you secrets, tips, and tricks to get into movies and tv as background talent and move on up from there.
This book includes advice on- Headshots Demo reel Auditions Casting calls And much more… I’m a best-selling writer in the area of Cognitive Psychology and Experimental Education Theory.
The classes in this guide also utilize my research into Rapid Skill Acquisition to help you get where you need to faster by hacking the learning process.
Along with that, I’m also an experienced performer with hundreds of credits, including commercials, movie roles, and documentaries.
Freeing the Natural Voice by Kristin Linklate
Describes the inner workings of the voice and obstacles of spontaneous, effective vocal expression and details exercises for strengthening and developing the voice as an individual and performer’s instrument.
Intent to Live by Larry Moss
When Oscar-winning actors Helen Hunt and Hilary Swank accepted their Academy Awards, each credited Larry Moss’s guidance as key to their career-making performances.
There’s a two-year waiting list for his advanced acting classes. But now everyone–amateurs and professionals alike–can detect Moss’s enthusiastic, in-depth instruction.
Loving to Audition by Larry Silverberg
Larry Silverberg, professional performer, director, and writer of the best-selling The Sanford Meisner Approach Volume I and Volume II has done it again.
He provides specific instructions that will lead to performances in auditions which are ardently authentic, urgent, as well as unique.
The actor will approach the audition event as a true moment of artistic creation; the experience will change from one of anxiety and distress to one of satisfaction, joy and satisfaction!
If you’re a student preparing for auditions or a seasoned professional, the classes given in Loving to Audition will enable you towards excellence in audition performances.
Secrets of Screen Acting by Patrick Tucker
With this new edition, Patrick Tucker keeps the engaging style and helpful structure of the first edition while addressing substantial changes in present technology, ensuring that this quantity will remain an indispensable resource for modern students of screen acting.
Upgraded for a new decade of display performance chances, Secrets of Screen Acting is a magician’s box of acting tricks for today’s performer and creates the distinction between acting for the stage and also for the display.
He explains that the actor, instead of starting with what is real and seeking to portray that on display, should function together with the realities of the shoot itself, and then work out how to make it appear realistic.
Self Management for Actors by Bonnie Gillespie
For beginners or polished pros. Stars need representation: they need supervisors to help guide them through the process of getting working actors.
Or do they? Self-Management for Actors guides actors throughout the process of taking charge of the company side of their careers.
There’s no secret method, no password entry system to the Working Actor’s Club.
What does exist is a easy, self-management concept that allows any actor to handle the business of an acting career without losing the ability to become a creative artist.
Balance is crucial, along with the strategies in Self-Management for Actors will place every actor on the way to having the best manager they deserve: themselves!
Strasberg’s Method by S. Loraine Hull
The book starts with the historic background, then the chapters move on to a thorough description of actor directing and training.
A lot of the”Directing” section is based on Elia Kazan among other prominent directors and Strasberg.
This book lays out an whole path of training exercises at a explicit, functional down-to-earth way for a simple to read comprehension of those techniques and processes used in”Method” acting.
The book also provides detailed advice for actors and directors when functioning on a function as well as audition techniques for actors and directors.
The Actor’s Art and Craft by William Esper and Damon DiMarco
William Esper, one of the leading acting teachers of the time, explains and extends Sanford Meisner’s legendary technique, providing a clear, concrete, step-by-step way of getting a really creative actor.
Esper worked closely with Meisner for seventeen decades and has spent years developing his famous program for celebrity’s training.
The outcome is a rigorous system of exercises that builds a solid base of acting abilities from the bottom up, and that’s flexible enough to be applied to almost any challenge an celebrity faces, from soap operas to Shakespeare.
Co-writer Damon DiMarco, a former student of Esper’s, spent more than a year celebrating his mentor instructing first-year acting students.
In this book he recreates that experience for us, letting us see how the progression of exercises works in practice.
The Actor’s Art and Craft vividly show that great training doesn’t constrain actors’ instincts–it motivates them to create characters with honest and convincing internal lives.
The Art of Acting by Stella Adler
Stella Adler was one of the 20th Century’s greatest characters. She is arguably the most significant teacher of acting in American history.
Over her long career, both in New York and Hollywood, she offered her enormous acting understanding to generations of actors, including Marlon Brando, Warren Beatty, and Robert De Niro.
The excellent voice eventually ended in the early Nineties, but her decades of knowledge and teaching have been brilliantly caught and encapsulated by Howard Kissel in the twenty-two course in this publication.
The Eight Characters of Comedy by Scott Sedita
At the heart of this Hollywood howto manual is the concept of The Eight Characters of Comedy, the eight most unique character archetypes used in sitcoms dating back to the arrival of TV.
Every actor can find a sitcom niche by identifying with one of these eight characters. Using past and current actors and sitcom personalities, Sedita explains in detail where these characters come in and how actors can play them frankly.
Who’s normally cast as The Logical Smart One
why do we love The Lovable Loser
why is Your Neurotic such a fun character to play
Additionally, readers learn how to break a comedy script, how to spot different kinds of jokes, how to deliver them with comedic precision, sitcom auditioning methods, and how to market themselves.
The Hollywood Economist by Edwards J. Epstein
In a Freakonomics-meets-Hollywood saga, veteran investigative reporter Edward Jay Epstein goes undercover to research Hollywood’s”invisible money machine,” probing the dazzlingly complicated finances behind the hits and flops, while he replies a surprisingly tough question: How do the studiosmake their money?
We also know:
- Why and how the studios harvest silver out of old film prints…
- Why celebrities door do not do–their own stunts…
- The future of Netflix: Why the”next big thing” now appears in such deep trouble…
- What it costs to insure Nicole Kidman’s right knee…
- How Hollywood manipulates Wall Street: including the story of the acquisition of MGM… wherein a consortium of banks and hedge funds lost some $5 billion… while Hollywood produced countless.
- Why Arnold Schwarzenegger is regarded as a contract genius…
- The destiny of severe fare: How HBO, AMC, and Showtime have discovered ways to earn money offer adult play, while the Hollywood studios want to cater to teen audiences.
- Why Lara Croft: Tomb Raider is regarded as a”masterpiece” of financing…
The Success Principles by Jack Canfield
The Success Principlesâ”pennies are going to teach you how to increase your confidence, tackle daily challenges, live with passion and purpose, and realize all your ambitions.
Not merely a collection of good ideas, this book spells out the 64 timeless principles used by successful men and women throughout history.
Taken together and practiced every day, these principles will transform your life beyond your wildest fantasies!
Filled with memorable and inspiring stories of CEOs, world class athletes, celebrities, and everyday people, The Success Principlesâ”pennies will give you the established blueprint you need to achieve any goal you desire.
The Young Actor’s Handbook by Jeremy Kruse
The way some introductory acting books are written, it would appear that a literal leg break is the best option.
From The Young Actor’s Handbook, Jeremy Kruse, an actress, author, producer, and manager who teaches method acting, acting for the camera, improvisation, and sketch comedy at The Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute in New York, mends this mangled genre, distilling valuable course and years of experience down to a lean, mean, instinctive hundred-page primer.
Rather than bludgeoning the uninitiated with dense paragraphs, vague theories, and opaque examples, The Young Actor’s Handbook ignites the beginning actor’s creative soul with inspirational acting exercises, acting concept, writing exercises, and insight into what it means to be a celebrity.
This concise and pragmatic manual will guide and advise the young actor, start actor, novice acting teacher, or anybody who wishes to know acting through a broad and diverse survey of essential understanding.
The teachings of Richard Boleslavsky, Stella Adler, Sanford Meisner, Uta Hagen, Michael Shurtleff, Lee Strasberg, and Constantin Stanislavsky are eloquently and accessibly left, as are basics of script evaluation, camera technique, the audition mindset, agent acquisition, along with the actor’s life.
Whether you are a curious novice, veteran acting instructor, or an interested observer, The Young Actor’s Handbook will improve your understanding of this enormous and rewarding craft.
To the Actor by Michael Chekhov
How does an actor learn to:
- Phone up emotion?
- Create a personality?
- Strengthen consciousness?
All these are essential techniques for each and every celebrity, and Michael Chekhov’s classic work To the Actor explains, clearly and concisely, how to develop them.
Chekhov’s simple and functional method – successfully used by professional actors all over the world – trains the actor’s creativity and body to match its potential.
This handbook for actors (and directors) has been revised and expanded by Mala Powers. It includes: a previously unpublished chapter on’Psychological Gesture’, translated into English from the celebrated director Andrei Malaev – Babel; a new biographical review by Mala Powers; and a foreword by Simon Callow.
You, the Career by Benjamin Mathes, Emma Sleath
Developed by Benjamin Mathes in one of Los Angeles’s most prestigious underground acting studios,”You, the Career” will revolutionize how you relate to the hustle, the industry, along with the actor you wish to become.
Drawing from 25 years in the business as an actor, producer, and ethnic entrepreneur, Mathes will explain to you how to take the power from the men and women who manage, and set it back into the hands of the person who produces ityou! Inspiring, challenging, and full of helpful tools.
This book is perfect for the beginner and the veteran actor. There’s a career that only you may create. This book will show you how.
You’re Not Really Hamlet And Everybody Knows It by Duane Daniels
A revolutionary fresh and empowering approach to acting from a lifelong performer, manager and coach. Whether you are a beginner or seasoned pro, this unique collection of techniques will enhance and inspire your work.
Also recommended for supervisors and writers. This book introduces you to Actor Brain / Character Brain and how they could work together.
Author Duane Daniels is a veteran coach and director in addition to a profession celebrity. This book will enable you and change how you consider acting!
Leave a Reply