The Golden Rules of Acting - Softcover

Andy Nyman is an actor, writer and magician. On stage, he co-wrote, co-directed and starred in the West End hit Ghost Stories, and won an Olivier Award for Best Entertainment for co-writing and directing Something Wicked This Way Comes with his regular collaborator Derren Brown. His many film appearances include Severance and Frank Oz’s Death at a Funeral. Andy's website can be viewed here. (2012-10-03)

"The book won't tell you how to act, but will tell you how to be an actor, how to stay sane and succeed in any creative position, if you have a dream and want to make it a reality it'll offer you properly useful advice. It's one of those books that helps you know yourself, ask the right questions, and reminds you to be happy. It is truthful, eye-opening and insightful, reading it feels like getting tips and advice from a friend down the pub; it is a goldmine of information. I'm no actor, but it's one of those books that I'll carry with me, return to time and time again because remembering this advice will help me become a better and happier person." - Huffington Post
"A little book but great fun... Presented in large print with jokey soundbites, occasional speech bubbles and stylised on-page annotation, The Golden Rules of Acting covers drama school, auditions, agents, directors, dealing with reviews and various other aspects of living an actor's life with wit. "Remember the best part about drama school is that you get to spend all day acting. Cherish that, you may have to wait a long time until it happens again," opines Nyman wisely. I liked his well-made point that success in this business is a marathon not a sprint. Samuel L Jackson was 46 when he made Pulp Fiction and Morgan Freeman 52 when he starred in Driving Miss Daisy. Nyman's advice about having a decent website and keeping a record of everyone you meet with a note of when and where is sensible too. I think it's worth the cover price for the quotations alone. Threaded through the book are gems such as Michael Caine's "I'm a skilled professional actor. Whether I have any talent or not is beside the point" and Mark Twain's "The harder I work, the luckier I get."...If you get only one useful nugget it will have paid for itself. -- The Stage

"The cover of this book has a splash star on it reading 'Over one million copies sold.' Then an asterisk, and the asterisk note says Completely untrue... (and continues.) Well, this book should have sold over a million copies and I'm sure it will. It's unique. A mixture of streetwise good sense and hilarious sometimes laugh-out-loud wit. It contains some 200 (I'm guessing) bites of good advice or quotations; every single one of them worthwhile reading. But there's wit too in NHB's production of the volume. Just in the way an actor might annotate a script, Nyman annotates this book with highlights, handwritten comments, capital letters. And colour too. The whole effect is one of irrepressible joie-de-vivre... which, in a way, underpins Nyman's survival technique. It's what's enabled him to be a jobbing actor for more than 20 years - a somewhat successful jobbing actor judging by his website.
Here's a taster: 'I deny that I said actors are cattle. What I said was actors should be treated like cattle.' (Alfred Hitchcock.) But my real favourite is the RSC director speaking to soldiers after a rehearsal of Henry V. He says: ...(No, I'm not giving that one away!) One of the most entertaining writers about psychology (inspiring yourself, self motivation, luck et al) is Professor Richard Wiseman (endorsing this book on the back cover)... and, moreover, his writing is academically and empirically based. Much of what Nyman is putting forward in his amusing way fits within Wiseman's framework. Without doubt, Nyman hits the nail home at every turn... This is an indispensable life saver and survival kit. Not a coffee table book. Keep it on the dinner table (where you can regularly dip into it)." - reviewsgate.com
"Christians have the Bible, now actors have this book. At last, everyone is happy." - Simon Pegg


"The book won't tell you how to act, but will tell you how to be an actor, how to stay sane and succeed in any creative position, if you have a dream and want to make it a reality it'll offer you properly useful advice. It's one of those books that helps you know yourself, ask the right questions, and reminds you to be happy. It is truthful, eye-opening and insightful, reading it feels like getting tips and advice from a friend down the pub; it is a goldmine of information. I'm no actor, but it's one of those books that I'll carry with me, return to time and time again because remembering this advice will help me become a better and happier person." - Huffington Post
"A little book but great fun... Presented in large print with jokey soundbites, occasional speech bubbles and stylised on-page annotation, The Golden Rules of Acting covers drama school, auditions, agents, directors, dealing with reviews and various other aspects of living an actor's life with wit. "Remember the best part about drama school is that you get to spend all day acting. Cherish that, you may have to wait a long time until it happens again," opines Nyman wisely. I liked his well-made point that success in this business is a marathon not a sprint. Samuel L Jackson was 46 when he made Pulp Fiction and Morgan Freeman 52 when he starred in Driving Miss Daisy. Nyman's advice about having a decent website and keeping a record of everyone you meet with a note of when and where is sensible too. I think it's worth the cover price for the quotations alone. Threaded through the book are gems such as Michael Caine's "I'm a skilled professional actor. Whether I have any talent or not is beside the point" and Mark Twain's "The harder I work, the luckier I get."...If you get only one useful nugget it will have paid for itself. -- The Stage

"The cover of this book has a splash star on it reading 'Over one million copies sold.' Then an asterisk, and the asterisk note says Completely untrue... (and continues.) Well, this book should have sold over a million copies and I'm sure it will. It's unique. A mixture of streetwise good sense and hilarious sometimes laugh-out-loud wit. It contains some 200 (I'm guessing) bites of good advice or quotations; every single one of them worthwhile reading. But there's wit too in NHB's production of the volume. Just in the way an actor might annotate a script, Nyman annotates this book with highlights, handwritten comments, capital letters. And colour too. The whole effect is one of irrepressible joie-de-vivre... which, in a way, underpins Nyman's survival technique. It's what's enabled him to be a jobbing actor for more than 20 years - a somewhat successful jobbing actor judging by his website.
Here's a taster: 'I deny that I said actors are cattle. What I said was actors should be treated like cattle.' (Alfred Hitchcock.) But my real favourite is the RSC director speaking to soldiers after a rehearsal of Henry V. He says: ...(No, I'm not giving that one away!) One of the most entertaining writers about psychology (inspiring yourself, self motivation, luck et al) is Professor Richard Wiseman (endorsing this book on the back cover)... and, moreover, his writing is academically and empirically based. Much of what Nyman is putting forward in his amusing way fits within Wiseman's framework. Without doubt, Nyman hits the nail home at every turn... This is an indispensable life saver and survival kit. Not a coffee table book. Keep it on the dinner table (where you can regularly dip into it)." - reviewsgate.com
"Christians have the Bible, now actors have this book. At last, everyone is happy." - Simon Pegg