Formal acting training vs. Jumping in and swimming
While a college recruiter will always sell an aspiring actor on a college education as the way to success as an actor, I tend to think that one may want to look twice at the costs and time of spending years in college as opposed to getting to NY or LA and jumping in. While I agree that an education is extremely important, unfortunately few college theatre departments will prepare an actor for a professional career, as I hear from literally hundreds upon hundreds of college theatre grads.
Success as an actor comes from many different avenues, and a college theatre degree is not how many successful actors find their way to an lucrative career. Take TVI alumni Eva Longoria, or Mena Suvari, both extremely successful actress, yet neither with a degree in theatre. Also, Katherine Heigl, with her success on “Grey’s Anatomy” and her new film release “27 Dresses”. Katherine got her start modeling for Sears catalogs in New York. She then did TV commercials, moving onto That Night and King of the Hill. In ‘94, she had a main role in My Father, the Hero playing Gerald Depardieu’s daughter, she followed that with a role in Under Seige 2: Dark Territory playing Steven Segal’s niece.
A wonderful article I read in last Sundays LA Times, about Katherine and her “audition class”….
Around the time she moved to L.A., Heigl said, she took an audition class — where she learned that she rolled her eyes too much — but has never had any formal acting training.
You can read the entire article here.
A few schools that I am aware of where the faculty stresses knowing the business as important as building a foundation include Elon College, with Richard Gang and Fred Rubeck in the department. In addition, Howard University has one of the most progressive professors, Henrietta Edmonds.