Depending on your age you may be at a place in your life where acting school is a viable option for you, you just need to decide whether it’s worth doing.
That really depends on your goals and where you want your acting career to take you. Acting school costs a lot of money and takes up a good portion of your time.
Acting school forces you to dedicate your time to acting in ways that you probably wouldn’t on your own due to a lack of proper motivation. It also teaches you things about acting that you probably couldn’t have figured out on your own. An important thing to note is that going to school for acting will not guarantee you work, it will just make you a better actor. Being a better actor will give you a higher chance of getting parts but again, there is no guarantee. I can’t count the number of times I’ve been to an audition, been called back for the call back audition, and then been told that I had the best acting but they liked the look of another girl more so that’s who they’re going with. This business is highly based on looks and a myriad of factors other than acting, so although acting is the most important, it’s not the only thing to take into consideration.
Attending an acting school will allow you to meet like-minded individuals and make a lot of connections in the business, although most of them will just be starting out like you and won’t offer anything useful yet. Because of the time commitment and the high cost it is definitely only something you should consider if you have the resources and love acting.
If you live in an area where the industry isn’t as big as a larger city and auditions don’t come as frequently then you might not want to go to an acting school unless you plan on permanently relocating to a place that can offer you more work. Another option for more periodic work like this is to just hire a personal coach for the times in which you do need their help. There are also a lot of acting classes available that are shorter and cost significantly less because they are just one class and not a whole school program. Sometimes agents or seasoned actors that want to share their talent will offer night time classes or workshops which can be very helpful if you have nothing else to learn from.
There are famous people who went to acting school (Marilyn Monroe, Robert DeNiro) and famous people who didn’t (Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise). Chances are high that once you graduate from an acting school you will get the same number of auditions that you would get without, you’ll just be better at acting in them. You could of course obtain this through personal research, coaching, and smaller classes as well.
Final Answer: Attend acting school if you have the time and money and really love acting, don’t fret if you don’t have the resources to, but at the very least learn from someone, somewhere who knows more than you do.
