A good while back, I came across this piece on Slate, and it encouraged my suspicion about this phrase.
Is there any reason to think actors claiming to be “classically trained” are any more talented than musicians claiming the same thing?
I know enough about music to have started to treat the phrase wth suspicion when musicians bandy it about. I don’t know much about acting, so my opinions about actors aren’t extremely strong, elaborate, or well-supported.
I’ve never heard an LA actor describe himself as classically trained, but that doesn’t mean they don’t like to tout their training. Some talk about the Meisner technique as if you can’t be an actor without it. Stella Adler is another brand name that gets bandied about a lot.
Improv training is highly valued, especially if it’s from a well-known franchise like Second City or the Groundlings.
For the great majority of actors (i.e., those who aren’t making a living at it) having SOME kind of formal training on their resume is a way of showing agents and casting directors their commitment to the craft, but once they get into that audition room their on the same level as anyone else.
One term that I hear tossed around more often by non-actors is “Shakespearean actor,” as in one of the stars of their favorite series really knows how to act because he’s a Shakespearean actor, as if that actually means something.
That’s a very interesting article. Brit Dopers, please chime in, but I’d hazard a guess that the “classically trained” badge might be worn more in the UK – actors who cut their teeth on Shakespeare, etc.
In the US, I think “Method actor” is bandied about in a similar way. Does it mean the actor studied with X teacher or at X school/studio? Or does it mean the “scratch and mumble” approach?
Something which is glossed over in that article is that the ‘classically-trained’ badge does seem to be more often applied by the publicity machine, of which ghost-written biographies are a part, rather than as a self-description by musicians themselves.
As for freckafree’s point, yes, I think you’re probably right, it’s a lazy shorthand for ‘went to RADA and so must be really good’.
I’m English. Over here, when an actor says he is ‘classically trained’, it is generally understood to mean that he has studied a lot of the ‘classical’ repertoire (Greek tragedies, Milton, Shakespeare, Marlowe etc.) and has been cast in these kinds of productions. The underlying idea is that tackling this kind of work calls for particular skills that take time to learn and to master, such as delivering the text with due regard for rhythm/metre, sense and poetry.
In my opinion, it is just one more way in which many actors try to pretend they have some sort of special ability. They don’t. I agree with David Mamet: all an actor has to do is say the lines the writer has written, and avoid the obvious (such as bumping into the furniture). The rest is bunkum. ‘Getting into character’ and ‘creating a character’ are abilities in the same way that an astrologer telling you what next month will bring is an ‘ability’. They may have spent time learning how to do it, and they may think they are doing something difficult that requires insight, knowledge and discipline, but they are simply deluding themselves (and others who have their critical faculties switched off).
In music, on the other hand, ‘classically trained’ is actually meaningful. Learning to play any instrument sufficiently well to play in even a third-rate orchestra is a formidable challenge. It calls for massive discipline over a sustained period of time (probably a minimum of about 20 years), and calls for the patient and progressive development of truly extraordinary mental faculties and motor control skills. Progress is measured by a series of graded examinations, and it is perfectly clear in empirical and critical terms that a ‘Grade 8’ player can do things that a beginner cannot. There is no equivalent in the non-skill of ‘acting’. All than at actor has to do is say lines in a way that sounds like someone talking instead of someone reciting. Some people can’t do it, but many people can. And that’s all there is to it.
Ah, but how they say the lines is an important part of acting. To paraphrase Twain, the difference between the right inflection and the almost right inflection is like the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.
And then there’s the issue of facial expression.
To give an example, Alec’s Baldwin’s performance as Blake in Glengarry Glen Ross really makes Mamet’s dialog impressive. Would Mamet have preferred Joe Nobody, picked at random off the street, to give that speech?
I happened to be around on set when they were filming The Way We Were and was able to observe them shooting scenes. One stuck out – Redford running past Streisand. It was shot several times, with Streisand doing it slightly different each time. In the final shot, she added the word “bastard,” under breath, after saying the line, and everyone knew that was the best (AFAIK, the scene wasn’t kept in the movie, though). By watching, though, you could see the work Streisand put into the single line she had in that scene.
A classically trained actor probably knows
Fencing
Dancing
Movement (in general)
An ability to desconstruct a script to better understand the text.
The difference between prose and verse in Shakespeare and how to use it and why it is being used.
And much much more.
I assume “classically-trained” for actors definitely plays out the same way as with musicians. I can see someone starting out doing local-playhouse Shakespeare and puffing it out on their resume - or seeing the media do it if the story has a hook in it.
Makes me think of great violinists vs. great fiddle players: same instrument, different worlds.
I played with a jazz guitar player last weekend. He had chords at his fingertips I couldn’t imagine (a bunch I recognized and use without knowing their names - but some of the others? Eeesh!). But he had a completely different right-hand technique from me, and whereas he had chordal complexity, I had all this right-hand complexity, pinching harmonics, doing hybrid picking, muting the strings to produce wildly-varying dynamics, etc. It was a hilarious “same instrument, different worlds” moment…
I describe myself as “classically” trained because it’s a bit more accurate than “opera singer” (I sing more than opera), and if I just say “I sing” people ask me if I auditioned for American Idol. My voice is appropriate for certain things, and not for others. For me, it’s descriptive, not an expression of superiority.
I am a classically trained actor.
That means that I have the skills and knowledge to do Shakespeare, the Greek texts, and similar material.
It does not, by itself, mean I have the skills to do Mamet, or Shepard, or whomever. Just because I can do Moliere doesn’t automatically mean I can also do Neil Simon. Those other authors and styles, I had to study separately.
That being said, lots of actors are full of shit. 
Having had the chance to play with some fantastic Irish fiddlers, I couldn’t agree more. Each of us was capable of things the other found impossible.
In my experience (I do a decent amount of acting for a non-full-time actor) “classically trained” refers to someone who has had extensive professional training in classical theatre: Greek plays, Shakespeare, Molière, etc. I’m not sure it always means that the person has some great talent or knowledge just because of that, although they might think they do. I guess Meisner or Method come in there to some extent, but I cannot imagine a “classically trained actor” not having studied the classics, while one who has studied Method alone would not, to me, really be called classically trained.
Classically trained musician means (to me) someone who has had long-term professional training in classical music and the techniques required to play it. I actually don’t hear the phrase used for musicians much.
Just wanted to say that I just took a Meisner workshop and it was one of the weirdest experiences I’ve ever had. I felt like I was in an est seminar, or “The Plan” (as seen on Six Feet Under). I was the only person who announced it during class as being weird, but I wonder how many other people felt that way. Maybe it gets more normal the more you do it. But if that’s classical training, I’ll stick with being an upstart. 
Thanks all. What I took away from that article is that "any amount of training in classical technique/repetoire makes you “classically trained.”
I think that’s what I started to suspect about acting, a trade of which I know almost nothing.
I didn’t stop to consider that it’s the PR guys that float this line.
And is suspect that there are varying amounts of truth and bull on this matter.
“The Method” or “Method Acting” refers to the techniques taught by Stanislavsky and their descendants, which are myraid. To oversimplify, a method actor tries to have a real-life experience similar to the character so as to have experience to draw on on stage. For example, a straight man who needs to portray a gay character might go to some gay clubs, possibly even go on a date with a man. To give a ridiculous example, a method actor playing a murderer might kill someone in real life to understand what it’s really like to to kill someone. Method acting is therefore subject to lots of jokes, many of them boiling down to implying that the actor is sleeping with their partner on stage. It’s also a personal choice thing- some actors swear by it, others roll their eyes and crack one of the aforementioned jokes.
There are a lot of American actors who are “classically trained” in that they went to drama school and performed in the classics, from Shakespeare to Chekov to Ibsen to Tennessee Williams.
But almost no actor describes himself or herself that way. And when the media describe someone that way, it’s USUALLY because the actor in question is better known for something lowbrow or vulgar.
Example: articles about Robert “Freddy Krueger” Englund often refer to him as a “Shakespearean actor” or a “classically trained” actor, mainly because that’s such a stark contrast to the gory horror flicks he’s most famous for.
It’s important solely to the extent that the actor is required to look and sound ike someone who is talking instead of someone who is reciting. Beyond that, what they do is utterly arbitrary. You don’t need to take my word for this, and I’m not asking you to. The evidence is all around us. Line up 50 professional, experience actors and get them all to perform the same line. They’ll do it 50 different ways. In fact, each will say the line in a way that is affected by their own, natural speaking patterns and rhythms in everyday life. Michael Crawford always sounds like Michael Crawford, no matter what character he’s playing or what lines he’s given. Ditto Sean Connery, Hugh Grant, John Gielgud, Michael Gambon, Alan Rickman and others too easy to list. Or would you contend that they are not acting?
As I said before, to look and sound like someone talking instead of reciting. I agree it’s part of the illusion. But it’s not a skill in any meaningful sense - actors just like to think it is. As I said before, some people can do it and some people can’t. Like being able to curl your tongue or raise your eyebrows independently. I can curl my tongue but I can’t raise my eyebrows independently. I don’t consider the first a skill any more than I regard the latter as a lack of skill. It’s just there or it isn’t. Likewise, I can act and many people have told me I do it very well. But it’s not something I regard as any sort of skill.
With regard to your first point, I believe Mamet would suggest he, Mamet, makes the dialogue impressive. All that Alec Baldwin has to do is say it so that it looks and sounds like someone talking, not someone reciting from memory (and, slight technical nitpick, Baldwin’s role, not in the stage play and specially written for the film version, is essentially a monologue rather than a ‘dialogue’ as such). Baldwin doesn’t make the words great. Mamet has already taken care of that. But again, don’t take my word for it or argue with me. Read Mamet’s own words in his book, ‘True And False’.
With regard to your second point, this is a Straw Man argument. I never said anything about ‘Joe Nobody’ performing the role. I will assume that with this phrase you are referring to selecting someone at random off the street and (hypothetically) expecting them to perform the role of ‘Blake’ in GGR. My contention is that if this person happens to have the ability to which I have already referred, being able to say the lines so that it looks and sounds like someone talking rather than reciting from memory, then yes, there is no difference in ‘skill’ between what he can do and what Alec Baldwin can do. However, it may well be that whoever is responsible for casting the role might feel that they prefer the way Alec Baldwin looks (largely a matter of genetics and maintenance, not a ‘skill’), and sounds (again, a product of genetics and environment, not a ‘skill’). In addition, there will be entirely arbitrary matters of opinion involved. This is why, very often, people disagree about whether they felt someone was ‘well-cast’ in a role.
So now, watching someone run by and muttering a single word is ‘work’ is it? We have different definitions of work. When I think of ‘work’, I think of the shifts worked by people like miners, nurses, farmers and bricklayers, and the skills they have to have to do their work well, and the time and effort it takes for them to deploy these skills.
Oh you’re one of *those *people. “Acting takes no skill. Acting is easy as pie.” Yeah go see a play with some horrible actors who have no idea how to read lines. Talent & skill makes a huge difference between simply reading lines on a paper and making the audience believe you are actually speaking them truthfully. And if the only kind of work is that which involves physical labor, aren’t you a magician?
I think that’s oversimplifying to the point of falsifying, but I agree that what you say is what “Method” has come to mean colloquially. Ask Stanislavsky, and he’d tell you it’s about really understanding and identifying with your character - writing a backstory if there’s none in the script, understanding the motivations and emotional needs and wants. Stanislavsky was one of the pioneers who thought that naturalism was a good thing on the stage (and screen), and he taught that the way to get there was to immerse yourself in the character so that even if you were to have your script taken away entirely and be given a new setting and incident, you’d be able to think and behave as that character would, not as *you *would in that situation.
Sometimes the easiest way to do this is to “stay in character” when you aren’t acting the scene, especially in choppy film work, and this is probably the most well known Method technique these days. “Asshole” Method actors who won’t go for a beer after work with the guy playing the villain and such. In reality, if you’re working from a theory that you must feel the emotion to portray the emotion, then it’s just a lot of frickin’ work to get yourself into that emotional state and come back out of it cleanly 93 times a day.
Early on, Stanislavsky tried to do this by having actors access their own emotional memories. Have to do a scene which requires tears? Think of the day your dog died. He mostly discarded this later, as it led to actors becoming wrecks. Later he tried the opposite: have to cry? Then go through the physical process of crying: alter your breathing, screw up your face, and then notice how the physical act brings you into the emotional state of sadness, and then go act the scene.
When it moved to America, Stanislavsky’s Method became increasingly psychologically oriented, and that’s when the emphasis on realism and naturalism really took off. Marlon Brando, and actually trained Method actor, spun film acting into a completely new direction with his frothing, spitting, incomprehensible anguish in A Streetcar Named Desire. The appearance of naturalistic emotion was revolutionary. Can you imagine Cary Grant playing the role of Stanley? Could he have done it? Sure, he was a fine actor; he played the roles of rakish young men just fine. But it would have been a very *different *way of playing it, because he did not study Method, and wasn’t particularly interested in naturalistic acting anyway. He wouldn’t have given two hoots about Stanley’s childhood abuse issues, and it would have shown in his performance. “Better” or “worse”, it would have been different.
But it won’t last forever, and it’s never been the only way to act, or the best way to act in all situations. The last two decades have seen a huge decline in realism in acting. Joss Whedon’s characters certainly don’t talk like real high school students. No one really talks like a Kevin Smith character. (Well, okay, there was this one guy I worked with in a video store…but he was weird!) No one is really as cool as an action hero, or has just the right quip ready at the right moment. Method acting, IMHO, is actually a hindrance when portraying unrealistic characters and situations. Others would argue with me on that point.
You are attributing views to me that I do not hold and have not expressed, and mis-representing the views that I have expressed.
The Method pretty much arose in opposition to “Classically trained actors”. Stanislavky et al. wanted to bring an “honesty” into the theater that they did not preceive as being there. Granted the “Method” that was advocated by Stanislavky in Moscow was markedly different than that with Adler, Actors Studio, Actors Theater and so forth, but the search for that “honesty” was still there.
In direct opposition to The Method was Tyrone Guthrie who was one of the biggest advocates of Technique which is/was the stuff that “Classically trained actors” do.
One of the great stories I have heard (probably apocraphal) was that during the shooting of Marathon Man with Laurence Olivier (a classically trained actor and Academy Award winner) and Dustin Hoffman (a noted advocate of “The Method” and Academy Award winner), Hoffman would go out and run mile after mile and scream at the top of his lungs to find the right spot for himself and the character. Olivier would take it all in. After one of these activities, Olivier turned to Hoffman and said, “Wouldn’t it be easier to just act dear boy?”
So getting back to the OP so how valid is it? For some, I guess, but I think Cervaise pretty much nailed it
I will add that I made a pretty good living as an actor for a number of years both on stage and screen, and it probably applies to me too.