Actor tips · Prep
Audition prep:Building the choices before you walk in.
Learning lines without homework is karaoke. Casting already knows the script. Walk in — or hit record — with research, a clear goal, and a sense of where the scene sits in the story. Then stay loose enough to play.
This checklist lives in Actor Tips in the app. Keep prep notes on the audition itself so they stay with the role — not buried in a separate Notes app.
Read the credits before you learn the lines
Director, writers, producers, company — anyone attached. Tone lives there. A kitchen-sink BBC one-off and a glossy streamer procedural want different sizes of performance, even on the same “worried mum” sides.
The more you know about the story, the less generic your choices. Five minutes on IMDb and the company’s last three titles is not procrastination. It is the first beat of the work.
What does this person actually want?
Get specific: what they want in the scene, why they want it, and what they will do to get it. Vague “they want love” does not give you behaviour. “They want her to stay in the room until she admits she called the police” does.
That engine is what the reader feels, even when the dialogue is small talk.
You might not be the lead. Fine.
Know how this character supports the story and moves it forward. Are you the obstacle? The witness? The joke that lets the hero breathe? Play that function without turning into a signpost.
Supporting sides still need a full inner life. They do not need a secret bid for the title role in every glance.
Who are you talking to — including the ones who never appear?
How do you feel about the other people in the scene? Do they help or block the goal? Off-screen characters count: the partner in the other room, the boss on the phone, the kid you just dropped off.
Your reactions go thin when “the other person” is only a reader with a script. Give them a history, even if it is one sentence.
Borrow their objective for a minute
Look at the scene from the other characters’ goals too. If you know what they are fighting for, your listening changes. You stop waiting for your next line and start dealing with a person who wants something.
The join between beats
Nail the shifts — emotional and behavioural, big or tiny. A clean transition is what makes it feel lived-in instead of “now I am angry, now I am sad.” Find the thought that turns the corner, then play the new beat.
Do the opposite take
Do not lock one version of the scene because it felt clever in the kitchen. Try the opposite choice — playful, colder, smaller, needier. The fresh one is often the take you would not have found by polishing take one.
Play it for the lens without going “presentational”
Picture how it reads on camera: eyelines, size in frame, where everyone sits. Film acting is not theatre projected smaller. It is thought that lands in the eyes, then the body follows.
For the tape version of this — light, wall, mic — use the self-tape checklist.
Watch it like they will
Record in-person prep and self-tapes. The camera shows the sniff, the sway, the eyeline that missed. Watch once as casting would — not as the person who just survived the take. Then stop nitpicking and go do the work.
Do the work. Not the booking.
Focus on the scene in front of you. When you stop gripping the outcome, the audition usually gets freer — and better. You cannot control the list. You can control homework, a goal, and a take that is alive.
Keep the prep with the job
One line on the audition card is enough: accent, relationship, or the opposite take that worked. Log the job the day the sides arrive so this work has a home — and so you can recreate what you did if a callback lands.
The same Actor Tips live in Audition Tracker when you want the list on the train.