Tips For Acting With Confidence From Acting Coach Shannon Sturges

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The acting profession isn’t an easy career choice. You are basically deciding to be vulnerable, rejected, and available for work at all times with no guarantee of payment. And yet thousands of people flock to LA each year to be an actor. Millions more try their hand at it from around the world. So what draws us in?

My guest this week is actress and acting coach Shannon Sturges from Speiser/Sturges Acting Studio. Shannon has appeared on several soap operas like Passions and Port Charles as well as shows like The Mentalist. She’s left the day-to-day hustle of auditioning behind and now focuses her talents on helping other actors. We share some real talk about shaking the audition jitters, what George Clooney means when he says “Just deliver the pizza!”, and how actors can have more realistic expectations in this business.

We also talk about her legacy. She’s a member of Hollywood royalty, as the granddaughter of legendary Oscar-winning writer/director Preston Sturges. She’s also a mom of two boys who are getting their feet wet in the entertainment industry as well. Because no matter how much rejection and hard work comes with this business, for some people, it’s just in our blood.  And that’s why we haul ourselves across town for a 2 line audition in the hopes that somebody, anybody, will validate us and say “good job.”  Or even better yet, “You’re hired!”

I also want to talk about how much Shannon endeared herself to me and she probably has no idea. I mentioned that I had an audition right after our interview and she shared some wonderful insights with me after we stopped recording. She reminded me of acting tools I had forgotten I had and honestly, made me want to take an acting class again.  This business is a community as well as a business. We are all striving for something and there’s a huge desire to want to help our fellow actor succeed. And thanks to Shannon’s help, I walked in to my little audition feeling more confident than I’ve felt in months.  If that’s not a sign we should all be in acting class, I don’t know what is.

To hear more of our conversation, and get a little inspo yourself, make sure you subscribe to my podcast on iTunes, Stitcher or wherever you get your podcasts. And you can check out the classes Shannon teachers at SpeiserSturges.com.