I was thinking and started to wonder don't most actors do stage work, or have experience with it? But when I asked my mom, she didn't think so.

Honestly, it would seem really odd to me, that there are actors out there who've never taken art in the most basic mode of their art.

So, what do you think, do most work actors have stage experience and how important is it to have that experience?

Good actors almost always have stage experience...

Or they should...

Not nearly enough actors do though

I've heard of so many actors doing shakespeare with a passion (Pacino, Malkovich, Norton), but I've also heard of people like Tilda Swinton who hate the stage and never do it. In an interview she stated how she knows nothing about it really and considers it a "seperate art" which sort of makes sense to me. I'm sure she's at least tried stuff on the stage though. I guess it depends on the person, but given the oppurtunity, it couldn't hurt.

Most successful, respected actors you see in films have stage experience. Most of them started in New York (that's the general place), built up experience and a resume on stage for 5-10 years, then moved to LA to try film.

This comes from a former acting coach who was an actor (did stuff in My Own Private Idaho) before deciding he wanted a family and to teach more. So it's his opinion. I'm just passing it along.

But I would definately say that (having done theater since the 8th grade and then done some film acting) having stage experience is wonderfully helpful.

Very few good actors start in film. On the other hand, quite a number of good stage actors stink at film (trust me, I've worked with them). The main problem I have with "film actors" is that if they don't do stage at all it's about a 99% chance that they have no formal training.

It's incredibly rare to find a non actor can act well. When I insist on pulling people from my theater department rather then using just anyone I always get some line about professional directors who look for non-actors. Well, that's all fine and good if you can audition 2000 people to find that someone with that something but it's a needle in the haystack odds.

After performing on stage where all of your gestures and expressions need to be clear to people 50 rows back in the audience, its a little difficult to restrict your acting to a very natural style when a camera is 5 inches away from your face. At least that is my experience.

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braininabox

but there are few things that need to be put up here.......stage is a good experience for an actor ...it really brings the caricature self of yours in front of ppl....but certainly not a de facto ....coz film is altogether directors medium.....actors look only as good a director can make audience believe he is.....and i would certainly add that stage experience helps a lot.....