In many professional realms in sports, business, law etc., even highly successful people continue to use coaches and classes to sharpen their skills. Do big name professional actors do this? Do any name actors go back to acting classes or coaches as students and not as teachers?
Plenty of them do. It is all part of their continuing education. Plus many actors need help to get into the roles that they are playing. Trainers, dialect coaches, acting coaches and teachers, they all play an important part of the process.
My acting teacher was always stressing that the best actors (his example was usually Lawrence Olivier) are constantly practicing. He liked to stress that Baryshnikov attending fundamental ballet classes every single day, and a good actor should be no different.
Absolutely. My favorite example is Keanu Reeves, who apparently actually listened to his bad reviews for Much Ado About Nothing and went to Shakespear camp and took acting classes. And he got much, much better after that. He started off playing characters that were able to be played using his natural tones, inflections and body movement. And then he tried to branch out and discovered that “acting” is very different from “saying these words the way you would say them if you were in this situation.” Lo and behold, he didn’t actually know how to act, he was just skilled at looking natural in front of the camera. (And being very, very pretty.) That doesn’t mean he can’t act, it means he hadn’t been properly taught. Rather than get all diva-ish about it, he learned to act. I wish more stars would do the same.
I have more respect for him listening to negative feedback and doing something productive about it than I do for his superstar status. Way to be, Mr. Reeves!