Michelle Danner Acting Studio: unlocking your performance potential
Actors at Michelle Danner’s school in the heart of Los Angeles gain from an individual approach, diverse techniques and hands-on film experience that help performers build confidence, take risks and keep their creative fire burning
Often nicknamed the ‘City of Dreams’, Los Angeles has long held a magnetic appeal for aspiring actors from all over the world. Countless performers from the UK have crossed the Atlantic to train, audition and forge careers there.
“There’s an energy in LA where you feel like anything is possible,” says acting coach and director Michelle Danner. “When people come to study from all over the world in LA, they really want to stay. They feel they can accomplish so much.”
Danner runs two schools in LA. The Los Angeles Acting Conservatory offers one-, two- and three-year accredited degree programmes in acting and film-making.
For working actors who want to “keep going to the acting gym” or performers of all experience levels who are in LA for a shorter period of time, the Michelle Danner Acting School offers acting programmes that can be adjusted to a student’s budget and length of stay, as well as workshops and online acting classes.
So what does it take to make it as an actor in the City of Dreams? Danner believes it comes back to this idea of “energy” and maintaining a sense of momentum as an artist.
“It’s always the same people that work all the time, because they’re going from project to project and their instruments are ignited,” she says. “If you don’t work all the time, then you don’t have that energy. And how do you get it? Well, it’s your job as an actor to keep that fuel going, to keep that flame lit.”
One way of doing this, Danner argues, is through training and regularly attending classes.
“I have seen students have breakthroughs in classes, and then the day after they are going to put their hat in the ring for a project, and everything is changed because of the night before. Or they go to audition for something and they are filled with that fire,” she says.
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Danner approaches her teaching with a unique philosophy, which she describes as the “Golden Box technique”. Having studied with the greats, including Stella Adler, Uta Hagen and Herbert Berghof, she believes that, rather than enforcing one approach on students, actors should have a variety of techniques at their disposal, tailored to their individual craft.
“Every actor has their own individual toolbox, which is where they put their gold. They put golden insights from different philosophies, from different methodologies,” Danner says, adding: “I always rebelled against that notion in art that everybody should come to the middle and be the same and do the same thing. Some people work best drawing from their personal life; some people work best from doing that and adding the imagination; some people work best just purely with imagination.”
‘People are so afraid to be over the top for camera. But if you’re justified internally, you’re never over the top’ – Michelle Danner
As a result, both of Danner’s schools teach a range of classes, including in Meisner technique, Stella Adler’s approach, scene study, improvisation and stage combat.
Students also get hands-on experience on set, with Danner having directed nine feature films. She also has two more films on the horizon, including romantic comedy Starstruck, which she shot in November and stars Alice Eve, Matthew Daddario, Billy Zane and Lauren Tom, and another yet-to-be-announced film she is coming to shoot in the UK.
She adds: “Our actors get hands-on experience, both in front of the camera and behind the camera. Everybody says this separates us from other schools.”
Finally, if Danner was to offer one piece of advice for actors auditioning in LA, what would it be?
“You have to take risks. People are so afraid to be over the top for camera,” she says. “But if you’re justified internally, you’re never over the top. The people that really book the jobs are the people that take the risks.”
For more information, visit: losangelesactingconservatory.com
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