On motivation
Take a pessimistic look at your chances of getting work. You have to be prepared to live a hand-to-mouth existence; to take work that you don't really want to do; or to spend months going round in a van, performing to a group of moody teenagers for £2. Only a tiny minority of actors actually get through to the good, well-paid jobs. If you want it enough, you'll be prepared to put up with all the crap – but you need to accept that it's going to be really hard. Jo Brand
Be honest with yourself. Ask yourself, "Can I possibly be stopped?" If you're going into acting on a whim, or for spurious reasons – because you want to be famous, or you think there might be money in it – then just turn around. You'll just get a kicking. Only the people that can't possibly be dissuaded from acting should be doing it. That's almost the minimum requirement. Paul McGann
On drama school
The important thing about training is that it buys you space – three years, ideally – in which to make an absolute and total berk of yourself, in front of your fellow actors, who are going through the same thing. It's a controlled environment in which you can slowly unpack your own neuroses, your inhibitions, your resistances. And if it's a well-devised course, you can slowly – having, as it were, disassembled yourself – reach back towards the light. Simon Callow
It's awful that you can't get grants to go to drama school any more: it's going to be a profession full of middle-class people. I know it's expensive: if it was me now going into drama school, I wouldn't be able to go. But please still do it, whatever your background. We need you. Julie Walters
Acting is not therapy. Be very sure that if the drama school does a lot of work on your personality – if it's going to take you apart – that it puts you back together again afterwards. Samuel West
On auditions
Imagine that you've already got the job: that they've said to you, "Great, you've got the part; can you just come in and read with the director?" It takes the pressure off. Luke Treadaway
I'm hopeless at auditions. I can count on two hands the number of parts I've got that way. On an audition, I wouldn't get into an amateur production of Bunty Pulls The Strings. Bill Paterson
On working with directors
Take notes not just graciously, but gratefully. Don't argue back. You get actors who, as soon as a director starts to give a note, will say, "Ah, what I was trying to do …" What you were trying to do is irrelevant – just listen to what the director, if it's a good director, is saying, because it's worth gold. I love notes; I thrive on then. I can't wait for someone to help me go further than I can by myself. Antony Sher
Treat directors (and writers) as innocent until proven guilty. The good ones, if you don't resist them, will take you places you never thought you could reach. Harriet Walter
On learning lines
Learn your lines when the director tells you to. The director will sometimes say, "I want everybody to be off the book by the first day of rehearsals": so do that. Try writing your lines out, at least 10 times for each scene. Or repeat them, or have somebody run them with you. However you do it, you need to be off the book when the director says you should be. Lenny Henry
Learn your lines with a friend the night before filming. Say them looking into your friend's eyes. Your friend will be distracting you. You will think you know the scene because you can do it looking at the floor, but human contact is distracting – and you want there to be human contact when you film the scene. Samuel West
On Shakespeare
The actor's primary responsibility is to make the text understandable at first hearing. That's quite a big thing, and quite difficult, especially if it's a fairly complicated text. Know the rules about verse-speaking. After that, I don't care whether you break those rules – just make me understand what you're saying, the first time you say it. Simon Russell Beale
Think of long speeches as a series of connected thoughts, not one big clump of dialogue. Each thought, each sentence, is a separate piece of your armoury. Think through each sentence: about how you glue it together; what it means; how you feel when you say each thing. You'll find it comes together like a kind of delicious soup. Lenny Henry
On stage fright
You need to be nervous. You'd be the walking dead if you weren't. Acting is a frightening job – stepping out in front of a thousand people and saying "Watch me" for the next two-and-a-half hours. I hate people who call us "luvvies". I'd love them to learn Hamlet and then stand next to them backstage waiting to go on for the first time. Then they can talk to me about being a "luvvy". Antony Sher
Accept that you're going to have nerves to begin with. I don't know many actors who aren't nervous the first time they do a performance on stage. You're nervous about whether you can remember your lines; whether you can get through it; whether the audience are going to like it; whether the other actors are going to remember their lines, or you'll have to bail somebody out. But after that, the nerves should get better. If I continually suffered with agonising, tortuous nerves, I would probably rethink my profession. Lesley Manville
On when things go wrong
Things going wrong makes live theatre fun. In my days at the RSC, there were some really funny mistakes: people's headdresses catching fire; people forgetting their lines. Every disastrous show you're in will yield by far the best anecdotes, and possibly the best friends. Imogen Stubbs
Remember that often, no one else knows something has gone wrong. Once, during a performance of War Horse, we had a technical malfunction, and the horse didn't come out. I held out my hand as if this was absolutely meant to happen, and went, "Come on, boy." It was the longest 10 seconds of my life – another five seconds and I'd have had to start tap-dancing. But eventually they got the thing working. Afterwards, I saw Michael Morpurgo [the writer of the book on which War Horse is based] in the bar. He hadn't even noticed. Luke Treadaway
On playing the long game
Be nice to people on the way up. I heard a great story once. There were two sparks who really bullied this young runner. About a year later, he came on set and the same sparks were there. They started on him, told him to get them a tea. He said, "No, you get your own tea – and you're fired. I'm the producer." That's how quickly things turn around in TV. You have to be very aware of that. Mathew Horne
On coping with rejection
There's a philosophical nature to acting. My mother used to say, "What's for you will not go by you." It's a great phrase to keep in mind when you don't get a job. Brian Cox
Remember you will fail in 99 out of 100 auditions. All actors do. Jane Asher
On staying positive
Acting is the best job in the world. It's miserable, and horrible, and 80% of actors are out of work. But it's also endlessly fascinating, and diverse, and without it, I would never have known about string theory, or currency exchange speculation, or Alzheimer's. And even if 80% of actors might be out of work, that means that 20% are in work. Simon Russell Beale
You'll get all kinds of advice about what you should do. I'm doing it now. But to me, the main thing is just persistence. It really is. It's remarkable the number of people you'll meet in a room at a party who'll moan about their lost chances, and you'll think, they didn't really stick at it. Really, it's a combination of persistence and luck. Mark Gatiss
• This is an extract from Advice from the Players, by Laura Barnett, published on 18 September by Nick Hern Books, price £9.99. To order a copy for £7.99, including UK p&p, go to guardianbookshop.co.uk
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