Essential tips and advice from stars of stage and screen.

Actors know the best source of advice on the profession is other actors. Nothing compares with the wisdom and practical know-how acquired through years of working in the business.

Advice from the Players features a host of tips and guidance on every aspect of the actor’s craft, direct from some of the best-known stars of stage and screen, including Julie Walters, Lenny Henry, Harriet Walter, Simon Callow, Mark Gatiss, David Harewood, Jo Brand, Simon Russell Beale, Lesley Manville, Zawe Ashton and Mathew Horne, amongst many others.

Drawing directly on their own personal experience, they offer essential advice on topics including:

• Applying to drama school
• Getting an agent
• Auditions
• The dos and don’ts of rehearsal
• Acting for camera
• Acting comedy
• Coping with stage fright
• Surviving the tough times
• Staying inspired, and much more…

Candid, passionate, sometimes contradictory, often very funny – Advice from the Players is a book to turn to whenever you’re in need of guidance or inspiration, whether you’re a working actor, at drama school, or involved in amateur theatre. It is also an invaluable introduction for those considering a career in the performing arts, and a fascinating read for anyone who wants to know what it’s really like to be a working actor.

'The advice you will find in this book will stay with you… one of those books which will become a vital part of your acting kit'

'Really impressive... Journalist Laura Barnett has had the good fortune to draw on the wisdom of 26 leading actors in compiling a book that will prove invaluable to those seeking to follow in their footsteps but should also have appeal for general readers.'

'A great deal of very readable, down to earth, entertaining, actorly wisdom'

Laura Barnett is a freelance arts journalist, features writer and theatre critic, who has written for publications including the Guardian, Observer, Time Out London, Telegraph, Red magazine and The Sunday Times. She is also a novelist whose debut novel, The Versions of Us, became a number-one Sunday Times bestseller in 2015.