Who You Learn From Matters More Than You Think.

Not everything deserves a place in your process, and who you learn from matters more than you think.

Coaching actors and directing actors is serious work. At Directly, we believe it requires experience, sensitivity, and a deep understanding of human behaviour. Language matters. The wrong acting advice isn’t just unhelpful; it can be genuinely harmful.

Not harmful in a “you didn’t book the job” way. Harmful in the way a careless remark can stay with an actor for years.

We’ve heard actors repeat notes like:

“Can you widen your eyes?”

“Can you lose the twinkle?”

“Try not to look so soft with your expression”

“Be smaller, your facial expressions are too big” 

These types of notes lodge themselves inside an actor’s process like a thorn in the foot. Suddenly, instead of thinking as the character and responding moment-to-moment, the actor is monitoring themselves. Am I doing it again? Are they noticing me doing it? Have I ruined this scene?

A good director or coach doesn’t work like that. They don’t tell actors what to remove from themselves. They give them something to play.

They might say, “Let their words land deeper.”Or, “Allow what they say to hit you like small punches to the chest.”

And more often than not, the surface behaviour shifts on its own, without the actor ever thinking about it.

We once worked with an actor who was holding visible tension in her mouth, pursed lips, a tight jaw. On camera, it read as unnatural. When we gently asked if anything was getting in her way, she explained that she’d been told by a previous teacher not to smile in emotional scenes. She was consciously controlling her face because the scene was a breakup.

That single piece of advice had turned her inward. She wasn’t listening or receiving, she was managing herself. And the truth is, people contradict themselves emotionally all the time. They smile, shut down, soften, resist. Trying to police those instincts is where acting starts to collapse.

Acting stops working the moment the actor becomes self-conscious.

Actors primarily look for guidance within our industry, but we can learn a lot by listening beyond it. We recently heard Gary Vaynerchuk (Gary V) speak about self-doubt, and it resonated deeply with what we see in actors.

Most of the critical voices people carry aren’t their own. They were planted by someone else, a parent, a teacher, an authority figure; and over time they become internalised. What feels like self-criticism is often inherited.

Bad direction works the same way. If you’ve been given damaging notes, they didn’t come from you. They were handed to you. But you’re allowed to question them.

That’s why we’re deliberately selective at Directly. We work only with directors who are actively working in film and television, day in and day out, with professional actors. They understand the difference between clarity and control. They know how to use language that frees actors rather than shrinking them. And most importantly, they care about actors.

By all means, practice with friends. Read scenes. Stay curious. But be mindful of who you learn from, and what you let into your process.

Because sometimes, a single careless note can take years to unlearn.

And good direction should do the opposite.