About

Shannon
Sturges

Thirty years in front of the camera. Fifteen years coaching the people who are still in front of it. One very strong opinion about what actually goes wrong.

Shannon Sturges in the director's chair at Speiser/Sturges Acting Studio

She grew up inside the thing.

Her grandfather, Preston Sturges, wrote and directed his way to the first Academy Award ever given for screenwriting. Her father acted. Her mother acted. There was never a moment where the business was mysterious.

Which is a mixed inheritance, and she'll say so. It meant she understood how the machine worked before she could drive. It also meant she had to find out the hard way that a name gets you exactly one meeting and then you're on your own in the room like everybody else.

She carried a primetime series for Aaron Spelling. She worked daytime, where you shoot forty pages a day and nobody has time for your process. She did films. She did the auditions that went nowhere, for years, the same as everyone.

Reference: warm empty room, brick and plaster, afternoon light Placeholder

Then she started teaching, and found the actual job.

For the last fifteen years she's run classes in Los Angeles and coached on set, Fast 8, Den of Thieves, 10 Days in the Valley, Lift. On-set coaching is a strange and clarifying job: you have ninety seconds between takes and a person who is about to do the scene again. There's no room for theory. You say one true thing or you say nothing.

Fifteen years of that produces a very short list of what actually helps. Most of what people believe about acting turns out to be decoration. What's left is small, unglamorous and repeatable, which is exactly why it can be taught to someone who has never done it.

I give you permission. That's most of what I do. People already know how to be truthful. They've just been told it isn't enough.

What she believes
  1. Less is more, alwaysHave it, don't show it. The camera is closer than you think and it is not on your side when you push.
  2. Competence creates confidenceNot the other way around. You don't feel your way into being good; you get good and the feeling follows.
  3. It's not yours to loseIt's yours to get. Nobody took your part. Don't grieve a job you never had.
  1. Creativity needs stabilityDesperation is visible in a room. Keep the day job, keep savings, and stop auditioning like your rent depends on it.
  2. Compare to the standard, not the roomAt a dog show you judge each dog against its breed standard, never against the other dogs. You're your own competition.
  3. If you fight for your limitationsYou get to keep them. She will say this to you, kindly, more than once.
Why a school online

The room in Los Angeles only fits so many people.

The studio classes are full, in person, and expensive by necessity. That's what a room and a working coach costs. Meanwhile the people who write in most often are nowhere near Los Angeles and have no intention of moving there.

Some of them want to act. Most of them want something adjacent: to stop freezing on video calls, to speak in front of their team, to hear their own voice without wincing. Same craft, different reason.

So this is that. The same method, taught properly, priced so it isn't a decision you have to agonise over, and available whether or not you ever set foot on a set.

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Start where everyone starts.

Five days, five drills, nothing to buy. You'll know by Wednesday whether this is for you.

Start the free challenge