University can be a very turbulent time in peoples lives, especially if you are only just starting your first year there. Its important to manage your time well and keep on top of your studying, however it’s also vital to find time to enjoy yourself. Acting classes can be a great way to help keep your mind active and also have lots of fun. Vital life skills are taught through acting, things that are useful for your degree, whether its film related or not. In this blog ill be looking at how acting classes can help you during your time at university, both academically and personally.

How can acting help my film degree?


One of the most obvious degrees that acting can help you with, is filmmaking. If this is your degree of choice, you are most likely interested in creating or working within the production of films, which will mean you will work with and possibly direct actors. Understanding what it’s like to act and what you are actually asking them to do is incredibly important and can help you have a better relationship with them. Communication is key, and it becomes much easier when you have some experience being in their shoes, while also helping you to empathise with their position.
This is also applicable to a degree in scriptwriting. Understanding what you are asking someone else to say, and how you would read this script as an actor, can make you double check what you are asking someone else to say, making sure it sounds natural, rather than wooden or unrealistic. If you expect an actor to take your script and dialogue seriously, they have to believe what they are saying and be able to read it off naturally, as no matter how skilled an actor might be, wooden dialogue will always sound strange.


“No script is written in stone. Filmmaking is an organic process and actors can bring the spontaneity of the moment to find the magic in a scene. Equally, they can improvise a good script to death.”
- Alan Parker


Director and screenwriter, Alan Parker believes that a good script can be improvised by actors. Whether to its detriment or benefit, it is good to know that actors have enough understanding of your characters and your script to feel comfortable improvising, showing that they are fully embracing your writing to the point they feel natural playing your characters.

Does acting improve academic performance?
Outside of other film and acting related degrees, acting can provide invaluable skills that will benefit you personally during your time at university, whether these skills directly relate to your degree or not, there is a lot you can learn from acting. Research has shown students involved with drama performance scored higher for their college entrance exams than those who didn’t, the same study also found that students who attended drama performance activities often show better reading comprehension, attendance, and overall focus. The study overall suggests that taking part in drama performances, such as acting classes, can boost your grades and improve your problem-solving skills. This could be due to how acting encourages lots of improvisation and creative thinking, constantly keeping your brain ready for something new as you read for different characters, always looking at scripts from different angles, and applying that to your performance. Acting can train your mind and help to keep it active and learning during your time at university, you may even find yourself with a new hobby or even a new career path.

Can acting classes relieve stress?
Acting can also be a great way of relieving stress, and overall improve your mental wellbeing, something that’s incredibly important, especially if you are just starting out at university. Moving away to university and meeting lots of new people can be very daunting, which can negatively affect your mental health. Which is why drama, and specifically acting classes, can help you during this stressful time in your life. They can help you to express any pent-up emotions you may be feeling through the characters you will be playing, channelling your emotions in a positive way, this can help you to better understand your own emotions and how you can regulate them. Acting classes specifically, offer you a sense of community that you might be missing, if you have recently moved away for university, finding this community can be hard despite all the opportunities to meet new people. Acting classes offer you the chance to meet likeminded people and a great way to meet people who might be in a similar situation.

How can acting help my degree?


More than just improving your academic prospects, learning how to act teaches you skills that are desirable in other degrees and fields of work. Skills such as teamwork, communication and public speaking are all developed through acting and can greatly help with something like a business or marketing degree. Overall improving your self confidence and communication when speaking with other people will help greatly in those industries. In 2024 LinkedIn posted data on its most desired skills, most of which are developed by practicing acting. The articles most important skill was adaptability, something that thrives through acting, adapting involves reacting to new conditions and scenarios, just like an actor does every time they are given a new role, script, dialogue, or prompt. Acting teaches you to adapt through throwing you in the deep end and seeing what you can come up with, and over time, you will naturally learn to react to any and all situations thrown at you.
“Acting is reacting.”
― Stella Adler
The same article also lists communication, leadership, teamwork, and problem-solving in its top 10 skills. All of which are developed by practicing performance arts, they are useful in all degrees, and most importantly, all career paths. Take teamwork for example, acting classes encourage acting out scenes in a group, learning each other’s strengths and weaknesses and working around that. Additionally, problem-solving, similarly to adaptability, it requires quick and creative thinking. Playing different roles, thinking about how you want to portray them and thinking how that character would act and react, are all great ways to develop your problem-solving skills. All of these skills come together to improve leadership abilities, working well in a team, being able to solve problems, and being able to communicate effectively, are all essential skills for leadership positions. More than this, acting sky-rockets self-confidence, which is a necessary skill for leaders, trusting in your own decision making but also being able to listen to your team’s feedback is vital to leading, both of which acting naturally develops.
Another study shows that creative thinking is one of the most desired skills by companies all over the world but especially prevalent in the UK. If there’s one thing acting can teach you, its creative thinking, problem solving and adaptability also fall under creative thinking, as you constantly have to look at different scenes and roles, imagining your characters history, how they would react to X, or how they respond to Y. Naturally this extends to more creative orientated degrees, for example problem solving, something that’s used constantly in computer science, or graphics design, where creativity is key.



Overall, acting is a great way to develop some essential lifelong skills during your time at university, they have been shown to improve grades, boost focus and give you the abilities necessary to excel at your degrees. More than this, they will vastly improve your employability, ensuring you will have the most desirable skills to employers in any industry. Performance arts are shown to relieve stress and help develop yourself personally, they teach emotional intelligence and are a great way of releasing pent-up emotions. However, most importantly, they are fun and a great way to socialise.
Acting classes are a great way to get started, and offer unforgettable experiences, if this is something that interests you, why not try one of our IPM Acting classes, meet likeminded people and give yourself all of the skills could possibly need.

You’ve read the script, that is your blueprint, it’s now your turn to start laying the groundwork to bring your character to life. Crafting and displaying their inherent qualities is all in addition to telling the story and telling you so much about them self. Having knowledge of their personal factors benefit the overall arc of your role; such as their motivations, desires, fears, and past experiences. Knowing what they strive for, and what they’re wanting to achieve is key for figuring out how they’re going to navigate the world that is being created, as well as their relationships; not only with the other characters in the story but also their relationship with the audience, how they should be perceived.

Understanding the Source Material
Unless you yourself have written the script, it’s not your story, it’s best to start by listening and learning. Read and understand what the writer has written about your character and use that as your starting point. This can vary from screenwriter to screenwriter in how much detail they provide; some will describe in depth descriptions of their characters, and others not much at all. Whichever way it is, it’s a starting point for you to be introduced with a simple description of their demeanour or actions that could already tell you so much about them, it’s about building something authentic around that. 

Know the Answers
The fundamental questions of 'who, what, when, where, and why' are essential for in-depth character exploration. Asking yourself these questions, and more importantly, finding the answers to them can create so much context to any aspect of your role’s personality. Think about even the most habitual aspects of your role’s life; their posture, how they walk, what they sound like? 
How is your character different from you? How are they similar? Implementing both of these answers is also a great way to craft something unique. In some parts it’s the fun of make believe, and in others it’s the comfort of the familiar. It's about finding a connection between you and the person you are portraying. So whenever someone asks you why something you’ve done is the way it is, you already have the reasons.  

“You, as  an  actor, should know more about this character than anybody now in the world… It’s for you to bring it to life”
Gena Rowlands quoting John Cassavettes

Can you Hear the Music?
Some actors find music a constructive tool in characterisation. Figuring out what the character would listen to and creating a playlist based around that. 
Even if your character isn’t the kind of person who listens to music, what would be the soundtrack to their world? Listening to a  soundscape can give you a sense of what it’s like to sit in your character’s world with nothing but their thoughts.
This is the process that Lynne Ramsay used for her film; You Were Never Really Here. To ensure that Joaquin Phoenix could get into the mindset of his character, one who has suffered with such a fractured psyche. She said;


“It was brilliant because he works so much on instinct. I just had to get into his headspace as much as possible.
I recorded fireworks on the Fourth of July in this dark garden in Brooklyn. You couldn’t see them but you could hear them. I thought, ‘This must be what it feels like to be in a war.’ I played it to Joaquin and said, ‘This is what’s going on in your mind every day.’”

Build a Relationship
The Director. The person who controls the making of a film.
Other than the actors, it’s going to the person you work the most, and the closest with. It’s important to work together with trust and respect for each other to achieve the same shared vision for the project. Open communication and a shared understanding of what each of you are trying to achieve is vital for a good working relationship, and creating that vision without clash or controversy will result in the best product. Creative differences are inevitable to arise. Openly discussing your ideas and listening to the director's feedback to find a collaborative solution is key to building a strong relationship. Both you and the director should have a shared goal in mind, it’s perfectly acceptable to bring suggestions to the table, like previously stated, you know the character better than anyone after all. As long as you are open to theirs too, build trust with the director, at the end of the day, it is their job to get an authentic performance out of you. By working together and supporting each other, as well as others, you will all achieve your goal. 

Experimentation and Spontaneity 
Don’t just find one path and stick to it. Use the questions you asked yourself, and the character’s answers you created to discover new and interesting characteristics, the quirks you could implement to make the role unique. Come up with new ways to do a scene, or deliver a line. One might come along that surprises you. Improvisation is acceptable within reason, and on some sets it’s even encouraged, this shows a deep knowledge of character, resulting in a feeling of authenticity. When you’re so in tune with this persona, and you believe what they are saying, the audience will believe you too. The dialogue you speak will be natural and the reactions real; Acting is Reacting.

Accepting Criticism 
A humble fact to accept is that nobody’s perfect. You’re not always going to get it right on the first try, you’re going to make mistakes. But what you do with them is more than a triumph for a performance, it’s also a reflection of you as a performer. It is important to listen to what feedback you can get and use that as an opportunity for growth and better understanding the scene, or even the story as a whole. Whether that is on set with your director or co-stars, or even a friend you’re practising lines with, constructive criticism is essential for improvement. Taking it in and understanding it can not only improve your performance, but also enlighten new pathways to take the performance down, it might inspire a new direction to try in the next take. 

Enjoy the Process
Ultimately, building something you can throw yourself into is a privilege for a performer, and something that is all part of the fun of acting and storytelling in general. At the end of the day, most people act because they love it, so love it.

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