shootwithroman.com client Caroline Jaden Stussi was recently interviewed by Backstage West about her way of finding the right acting coach in L.A. The Swiss native was very authentic in this interview and we commend her for saying it ‘how it is’. After all, authenticity is what the name of the game should be in this town, not sincerity.

ASKING THE RIGHT QUESTIONS

Two and a half years ago, when Caroline Stussi arrived in Los Angeles from Switzerland, she went to the Lee Strasberg Institute because it’s one of the acting schools known overseas. But she wasn’t happy there. “You always had to go to painful places to get something out,” she says, “and that was just not logical for me.” So she started calling teachers and schools she saw in Back Stage with a few prepared questions: What is your approach? What teachers did you study with? Do you use one method or several? What do you emphasize? Are there working actors in your classes? That last question was especially important to Stussi, because she wanted to study among professionals. Many of her phone calls were never returned, but those who responded fast seemed professional to her, and she audited three classes. Stussi found that the answers she got on the phone were quite different from the reality in the classroom — particularly the quality of the students, which was often shockingly low.

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