Les Chantery Studio

Les Chantery Studio A Platform for the Professional Actor. Acting Self-Tape & Audition Masterclasses Les Chantery Studio is for the professional actor.

It offers screen test classes designed to equip actors with cutting edge techniques and tools to BOOK THE JOB!

09/30/2026

Memory is not purely intellectual. Research on embodied memory suggests that remembering can involve partial reactivation of sensory systems associated with the original experience. That is what makes Diane Lane’s work in Unfaithful such a powerful lesson for actors. Connie doesn’t appear merely to think about what has just happened. Lane allows the memory to become sensory and physical: breath changes, muscles tighten and release, the hands become involved, pleasure collides with shame and the experience seems to reverberate through the entire body. We cannot know precisely what Lane was internally imagining while filming the scene, but the acting principle is valuable: when conjuring a memory, don’t stop at the idea of what happened. Give yourself the images, sensations and circumstances vividly enough that the body has something to respond to. The camera can then capture behaviour rather than an actor demonstrating an emotion.
- From the #1 best selling acting book by LES CHANTERY: THE DANGEROUS ACTOR

UNFAITHFUL (2002) | Distributed by 20th Century Fox copyrightencyclopedia.com

Disclaimer: This video is for educational purposes, offering a unique perspective that actors and enthusiasts can apply to their work. The interviews and videos we share are widely available on the World Wide Web. While we do not own the rights to these videos, the posts on this page are meticulously selected, curated, cropped, trimmed, and spliced to deliver the most insightful moments from esteemed working actors. This process is a labour of love, and we are proud of our edits. We hope you enjoy the insight and apply it to your own craft.

09/29/2026

Every situation on screen has to feel like a BIG DEALl. Not louder or more dramatic, but invested. The Special Day Tool is your shortcut. Imagine the moment is happening on your birthday, or Christmas, or New Year’s Eve. Suddenly, the stakes rise. Psychologists call this the Temporal Landmark Effect: events mean more on special days. A missed call stings deeper, a fight cuts sharper, a small gesture carries more weight. Layer this into your work and the audience will feel the significance without you ever having to push. That is how ordinary “scenes” become unforgettable.
- From the #1 Best Selling book THE DANGEROUS ACTOR by Les Chantery

09/29/2026

From the #1 best-selling book THE DANGEROUS ACTOR: Technique is not there to make every take identical. It is there to give the actor enough command of the craft to reliably return to the person, the situation and the demands of the “scene”, while remaining available to what happens differently each time. David Schwimmer’s description of repeatedly finding new ways to trip, enter a room or respond to another actor captures an important distinction between repetition and replication. For an actor, that means knowing the material and technique well enough that attention can move away from reproducing yesterday’s result and toward playing with the people in front of you. And Schwimmer’s team-sport analogy matters for the same reason: screen acting is relational. Your performance is being shaped continuously by what your “scene partner” gives you, the timing of the ensemble and the demands of the production. Technique gives you something dependable to return to. It should never remove your capacity to respond.

From the #1 best-selling book THE DANGEROUS ACTOR by LES CHANTERY.

DISCLAIMER

Disclaimer: This video is for educational purposes, offering a unique perspective that actors and enthusiasts can apply to their work. The interviews and videos we share are widely available on the World Wide Web. While we do not own the rights to these videos, the posts on this page are meticulously selected, curated, cropped, trimmed, and spliced to deliver the most insightful moments from esteemed working actors. This process is a labour of love, and we are proud of our edits. We hope you enjoy the insight and apply it to your own craft.

From the #1 best-selling book THE DANGEROUS ACTOR: Aristotle argued in Poetics that a “probable impossibility” can be m...
09/27/2026

From the #1 best-selling book THE DANGEROUS ACTOR: Aristotle argued in Poetics that a “probable impossibility” can be more convincing than an “improbable possibility,” and more than two thousand years later, the principle remains remarkably useful for actors. Audiences will accept extraordinary worlds, unlikely circumstances and completely unexpected behaviour, provided they can understand why that behaviour makes sense for this person in this situation. The science of prediction helps explain why: our brains continuously use context and previous experience to anticipate what is likely to happen next, so violating an expectation can capture attention, but the behaviour still needs to become psychologically understandable. This is why bold acting choices are not automatically believable acting choices. Surprise us. Contradict us. Do something we never anticipated. Just give us enough behavioural reality to believe you. From the #1 best-selling book THE DANGEROUS ACTOR by LES CHANTERY.

09/26/2026

Actors spend enormous cognitive effort learning words, and one of the risks is that the text can begin to lead the performance: the line arrives, then the hand follows as though the body is illustrating something the actor already knew they were going to say. Real communication is often organised differently. Gesture and speech operate as a closely connected system, and research into spontaneous conversation found that the meaningful part of a gesture began, on average, around 200 milliseconds before the corresponding information appeared in speech. This is what makes Philip Seymour Hoffman so compelling to watch in Flawless. Rather than appearing to retrieve dialogue and then decorate it with movement, his behaviour gives us the impression of someone retrieving an experience: the image, thought and physical impulse seem to be forming as he speaks. Don’t just learn the words. Build the pictures, memories and circumstances behind them, then allow the body and language to tell the story together. From the #1 best-selling book THE DANGEROUS ACTOR by LES CHANTERY.

Credit: Flawless (1999) | Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures, Inc. AFI records MGM as the production company and copyright claimant for the film.

Disclaimer: This video is for educational purposes, offering a unique perspective that actors and enthusiasts can apply to their work. The interviews and videos we share are widely available on the World Wide Web. While we do not own the rights to these videos, the posts on this page are meticulously selected, curated, cropped, trimmed, and spliced to deliver the most insightful moments from esteemed working actors. This process is a labour of love, and we are proud of our edits. We hope you enjoy the insight and apply it to your own craft.

09/25/2026

Nicolas Cage says acting can be whatever you want it to be, and that is why technique should never become a prison. In The Dangerous Actor, there is no single prescriptive way to work. If there were, every actor could simply follow the same steps and arrive at a brilliant performance. Technique is there to assist you when you have a problem. Learn the tools, then create a process that works for you. The aim is not to show an audience how well you understand an acting technique. It is to understand the person (character) and their situation (scene) so completely that we stop seeing the acting.

From the #1 best-selling book THE DANGEROUS ACTOR by LES CHANTERY.

Credit: The Hollywood Reporter.

Disclaimer: This video is for educational purposes, offering a unique perspective that actors and enthusiasts can apply to their work. The interviews and videos we share are widely available on the World Wide Web. While we do not own the rights to these videos, the posts on this page are meticulously selected, curated, cropped, trimmed, and spliced to deliver the most insightful moments from esteemed working actors. This process is a labour of love, and we are proud of our edits. We hope you enjoy the insight and apply it to your own craft.

09/25/2026

Jennifer Coolidge describes a familiar audition-room trap: someone introduces you as funny, talented or brilliant, and suddenly you feel responsible for proving them right. The compliment becomes a standard you’re trying to meet instead of something you can simply receive. In The Dangerous Actor, your preparation gives you something more useful to focus on: what your person (character) needs, why it matters and how they respond to the person in front of them. You don’t have to demonstrate that you’re funny or talented. You have to enter the situation (scene), pursue something specific and allow the performance to unfold. The moment you stop trying to live up to the compliment, you can get back to doing the work.

From the #1 best-selling book THE DANGEROUS ACTOR by LES CHANTERY.

Disclaimer: This video is for educational purposes, offering a unique perspective that actors and enthusiasts can apply to their work. The interviews and videos we share are widely available on the World Wide Web. While we do not own the rights to these videos, the posts on this page are meticulously selected, curated, cropped, trimmed, and spliced to deliver the most insightful moments from esteemed working actors. This process is a labour of love, and we are proud of our edits. We hope you enjoy the insight and apply it to your own craft.

09/24/2026

This is the kind of performance that reminds us: great acting isn’t about choosing logic or emotion, it’s about knowing how to dance between both, at exactly the right moment.

In this harrowing moment from Grey’s Anatomy, Sarah Drew shows what it means to walk that razor’s edge. April’s words follow pure logic at first: reciting facts about herself, appealing to reason in hopes the gunman will see her humanity. But as logic fails, you can see - frame by frame - emotion rise up and fuel her next move.

This balance isn’t just in the writing, it’s in Drew’s precision. It’s in how she paces each second, letting fear leak through at exactly the right moments, so she stays on her mission and yet we see her terror.

Neuroscience supports this: when logic breaks down, emotion takes over as a survival fuel. Drew’s performance embodies this oscillation.

“To create a dangerous self-tape, map out how your person is trying to win logically and then when they should shift to emotional appeals. Emotion is reasonable fuel when logic itself isn’t prevailing - escalate! Escalation—the build-up of tension—is essential for keeping the situation alive.”
- Page 133, THE DANGEROUS ACTOR

Credit: GREY’S ANATOMY | Shondaland | ABC Signature / Disney Television Studios

Disclaimer:
This video is for educational purposes, offering a unique perspective that actors and enthusiasts can apply to their work. The interviews and videos we share are widely available on the World Wide Web. While we don’t own the rights to these videos, the posts on this page are meticulously selected, curated, cropped, trimmed & spliced to deliver the most insightful moments from esteemed working actors. This process is a labour of love, and we’re proud of our edits. We hope you all continue to enjoy them!

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