The Helen Mirren Teaches Acting MasterClass is easily one of my favourite masterclasses to date (and I’ve enjoyed a lot of them). I’m not an actor, but I’ve been a fan of Helen Mirren for many years and figured I could learn some valuable insights into character construction that would help my writing career.
Seeing as my All Access Pass lets me enrol in all of the MasterClass courses, I decided to dip into Dame Helen Mirren’s class when I had a spare half hour one evening. Over six hours later, I had a notebook stuffed with golden insights into storytelling, a renewed love of Shakespeare, an intense hunger to hit the theatre (as an actor and spectator), and an immense amount of respect for Helen Mirren as a teacher.
I always try to be balanced in my reviews, highlighting the good and bad aspects of courses, but I can’t find a single fault with the Helen Mirren Teaches Acting MasterClass. It is essential viewing for anyone interested in the performing arts or storytelling and is incredible value for money.
This review will give you my rundown of why Helen Mirren’s MasterClass is so superb.
Here’s my Helen Mirren Teaches Acting MasterClass review
You know it’s going to be a great class before you even dive into the first video module.
Turning to the front of your supplementary workbook, you see instructions on how to be an active participant in Helen’s class (via recording and writing exercises), required reading, and a class assignment.
I love seeing a juicy coursework assignment when I enrol in these classes. And the assignment in Helen Mirren’s MasterClass is very exciting.
Hint: it involves workshopping Shakespearean monologues because, as Helen says, “if you can do Shakespeare, you can do anything.”
Flipping through the workbook, you see that a ton of thought has been poured into the construction of the syllabus. The workbook is impeccably designed to follow logically from Helen’s video modules, reinforcing what you learn from her.
I was excited before the first video module even began. And my excitement only grew and grew from there.
What you get in the Helen Mirren Teaches Acting MasterClass
You get 6+ hours of video modules. That’s Helen Mirren talking directly to us on a number of key fascinating acting and storytelling concepts.
Each module is long-form and average length is about the time of a TV show.
Sometimes Helen is sitting talking to us face-to-face, sometimes she’s showing us around a set, sometimes we’re in her makeup room, costume closet, at the wig or prop table, or analysing scenes from her movies and television dramas.
Helen loves to mix it up, keeping it interesting and making it easier for us to visually see the advice she is imparting.
There are 28 video modules, each detailing a core part of the storytelling profession broken into various exciting filmmaking topics. I won’t list all of the modules because you can check out the entire syllabus yourself here, but some of my favourite modules included:
- Human Behaviour
- Bonus: Naturalism
- Characterising the Set
- Breaking Down A Script
- Shakespeare (Part 1 & 2)
- Preparation and Rehearsal
- Film Acting Technique (Part 1, 2 & 3)
- Creating Characters: Hair & Makeup (Part 1 & 2)
To be honest, it’s actually impossible to rank the lessons because each one is brilliant.
Each of Helen’s video modules is a masterclass in itself.
Despite loving all of the modules equally, I’ll give an extremely brief rundown of a few things I liked from a few of them.
Right from the introduction video you can tell Helen is a great teacher (even though she has never taught before).
Helen Mirren is inspiring, raw, open, emotional (but not overly so), philosophical, fun, interesting, and a compelling speaker. Her passion leaps from the screen and is incredibly infectious.
Helen begins by discussing the insecurities of the actor and the philosophy of acting – how it’s an empty space that we fill with our fears, terrors, imagination, poetry, philosophy, passion, and storytelling. From there, everything we do is a service to the story.
After learning about Helen’s journey in the theatre, how she evolved as a theatre actress, and how she chooses roles, we are treated to her fascinating script process.
Helen says upfront that her process requires you to be in a privileged position of getting good roles to start but it’s fascinating nonetheless.
Plus, when answering one of the student questions in the Office Hours section, Helen drops a few gems of advice on how to never have to do roles you don’t want to when starting out.
If you follow Helen’s advice, her script process is completely relevant to you even if you are an up-and-coming actor.
We then learn how to break down a script. Helen’s advice is based on her personality (so it may or may not work for you) but I thought it was great and a good reminder about what you should be looking for when reading a script for the first time and what you should be focusing on.
It was riveting to watch what Helen does right after the first read-through. You’ll learn why you’ll need two, three, or even four scripts for her method – because she literally deconstructs the script.
Then we get into Shakespeare and some of the most enjoyable educational content I have experienced in a long time.
Helen begins with a discussion on why Shakespeare is so great for the budding actor to wrestle with.
Then she dives into a read-through of a speech from The Merchant of Venice, one that she herself hasn’t performed and doesn’t know by heart. She also performs a speech from The Tempest (one of my favourites).
This was a real treat. Helen reads out the lines and analyses and unpicks the meanings. The important thing we learn here is how to find your own meaning.
The literal meaning is one thing but particularly with Shakespeare you’re allowed to find your own meaning. It must have a meaning for you because then the line lives for you – as an actor, that’s the most important thing.
I loved Helen’s reading and interpretation. I also thought it was great to see for anyone who is intimidated by Shakespeare because even Helen trips over a few words and needs to say a few lines repeatedly to get it right.
Helen offers an incredibly passionate and intelligent reading that made me want to devour Shakespeare all over again. If only she had been my tutor at university – I think I would have turned up to more of my Shakespeare classes!
“Shakespeare is a great training ground because it’s so difficult. It’s much harder than anything else you’ll ever do.”
I saw I wasn’t the only student who was amazed by Helen Mirren’s ability to teach Shakespeare.
Look in the comments for the Shakespeare module and you’ll see that Helen has awakened a new love of Shakespeare in all of the other students too!
These lessons even brought students to tears, and I can see why. Words come alive when Helen reads them. And we get a glimpse into how we can also do that ourselves on the stage.
The entire Helen Mirren Teaches Acting MasterClass has huge amounts of replay value. Particularly the Shakespeare section, which I’ve personally rewatched a few times now.
If you don’t immediately go out and buy a book of Shakespeare after Helen gives her speeches, you are officially dead inside.
After rekindling our love of Shakespeare, Helen teaches us how to find our character.
This was a superb segment of the course. Beautiful, inspiring, motivating, and filled with practical advice grounded in Helen’s years of experience.
I am not an actor, but this class made me want to ditch my writing career and take to the stage. If you’re an actor and you need pepping up on your journey, this class will thoroughly reinvigorate you and remind you of why you started in the first place.
We learn Helen’s research process, which is different for fictional and real characters and are treated to fascinating stories of how Helen found unbiased accounts for some of her characters like Elizabeth I.
We also get these in-depth multi-part lessons in creating characters using costumes, hair, make-up, and props.
We learn about how costumes can tell stories that serve your character. We learn about costume practicality, movement, period, emphasising your features.
Everything here made me long to return to the theatre (I used to act regularly). I can’t believe I actually geeked out over wigs!
These are extraordinary lessons because they are the perfect illustration of why different people like MasterClass. This shows why writers like myself enrol in the acting classes.
A designer or dress maker or make-up artist could watch Helen Mirren’s MasterClass and get as much value out of it as the primary intended audience of actors.
By the time I was half way through Helen Mirren’s Acting MasterClass and listening to her advice about preparation and rehearsal, I realised something.
Some MasterClasses can get a mixed response (like the Annie Leibowitz one). But Helen’s class is a complete knockout. All the other students (and I can’t believe there aren’t that many at this moment in time) are raving about this class.
Just one of the Helen Mirren Acting MasterClass video modules alone is worth the price of entry.
I loved hearing about how Helen learns her lines, how she researches experiences she hasn’t had (like childbirth), and her discussions about going into dark places (like war).
It was also fascinating to hear Helen talk about accents.
Russian accents are particularly bad in Hollywood. Half the time, if the actor isn’t natively Russian, you can’t actually understand what the heck they’re saying. So hearing about how Helen managed to pull off her superb Russian accent in The Debt was amazing.
Helen drops so much gold in this course.
Another one of my favourite modules was about human behaviour. I absolutely adored this lesson. We learned about acting surprise, physical pain, nudity, sex, sleep, being drunk, dying. Each facet was it’s own gem, but I personally loved the advice about acting drunk, dying, and surprise.
You know it’s a great lesson when it’s already long and in-depth and you wished it was even longer.
I could listen to Helen Mirren talk about acting, art, and human behaviour all day.
I also loved all of the film acting technique modules. There is so much information here that it’s broken up into three parts.
We learn the differences between stage and film acting and techniques that help in both. We learn how much to plan your performance, understanding the context of your shots, managing energy, relaxation advice, what to do between takes, finding freedom within technique, and so much more.
After the film acting lessons, we start digging into analysing some of Helen’s performances in case studies of works like Prime Suspect, Elizabeth I, and The Queen.
Helen dissects everything in these scenes. Close-ups, theme, voice levels, technical demands, how to ensure the staging fits your character, how to approach period dialogue, emotion and technique, the filmmaking environment, mannerisms, looks, intention, everything.
This course is great advertising for Helen’s body of work. I immediately binged The Queen after Helen’s analysis of several great scenes.
The Helen Mirren Teaches Acting MasterClass is one of the best courses MasterClass have to offer.
And that’s saying something because their quality is insanely high and I’ve enjoyed everything they’ve put out (thanks to the All Access Pass).
The MasterClass is easily worth it as a standalone purchase. The All Access Pass is a no-brainer upgrade too but if you just want Helen’s class, rest assured that the $90 is extremely well spent.
The course, in addition to being crammed with practical wisdom, is a piece of art in itself – a real marvel to watch and all the lessons sunk in so well because of it.
I noticed that every single lesson had many students saying it was their favourite lesson so far. Every module is unmissable, bursting with advice and entertainment.
And, as if all of that wasn’t enough, Dame Helen Mirren is even super active answering tons of student questions in the Office Hours section of the course.
You simply can’t get better than that.
I might even go so far as to say this is the best acting masterclass on the internet.
But let me know what you think.
You can enrol in the Helen Mirren Teaches Acting MasterClass here.
