Cue lights, camera, action! Roísín Inglerekindles her thespian ambitions as she joins former S Club 7 pop star Rachel Stevens in a film acting masterclass given by a Hollywood coach at the Irish Film Academy in Dublin.
My acting days were some of the best of my life. They consisted of bit parts in various Dublin Youth Theatre productions. There was also one starring role in Tennessee Williams's This Property is Condemned, where I played one of his tormented southern belles going off the rails on a railway track.
My film career was shorter and not so sweet. At its pinnacle I beat off, ooh at least one, young hopeful to win the part of a young prostitute in a student film. I still remember, early on in the production, phoning to find out about rehearsal times and learning that I wouldn't be needed again. Ever. I'd been sacked. My inner city Dublin accent wasn't up to scratch, apparently. Devastated wasn't the word.
Once a thesp, always a thesp though. When the boss e-mails me to enquire whether I would be interested in taking a master class in film acting for the purposes of an article, I don't need much persuading. When I hear the instructor is from the same Hollywood acting studio that coached Brad Pitt to his breakthrough role - remember that cute cowboy in Thelma and Louise - I leg it to the bathroom mirror to prepare. "You talking, to me? I don't see anyone else here." Oh, I still had it alright.
The class is being held in the Irish Film Academy in Dublin, a place I'd never heard of before. The academy, the first of its kind in Ireland, was established during the summer by the Fair Cityactress Rachel Sarah Murphy, who plays Jo in the RTÉ drama series. The Georgian house in Temple Bar where the academy is located hosts students and film-makers for day and night courses in acting and other technical aspects of the industry. Instructors include author Ferdia MacAnna, who teaches screenwriting.
Linking up with the Margie Haber studio, Murphy says, was a risk, in that she couldn't be sure her approach would be right for the students. Last year, Murphy enrolled on a course in Londonwith Cameron Diaz's acting coach. "They had the students wearing g-strings and bras doing sexy dances. Oh, don't talk to me, I walked out of his class. And there are these kinds of teachers out there so you do have to be wary," she said.
In the end, Hollywood-based Haber, author of acting bible How to Get the Part Without Falling Apart, sent one of her instructors, Jim Gleason, to do the week-long course. Murphy immediately approved. "He just has the perfect temperament to deal with Irish people, so I needn't have worried," she says.
Gleason answers the door of the academy with a flourish. He has one of those faces that makes you go, "Do I know you?" and then you watch his show reel and realise his face must have lodged in your subconscious at some time. His acting credits include The West Wing, Gray's Anatomyand the brilliant Curb Your Enthusiasm- trivia buffs might like to know he plays the part of the guy who gets angry with Larry David for trying to use the disabled persons' toilet, thus skipping the long queue to the gents. ("What? I've got a stutter," Larry objects.)
Over a breakfast of pancakes, bacon and scrambled eggs, Gleason explains the Margie Haber method of preparing actors - everyone from Pitt to Halle Berry - for auditions. After all, if you are going to a job interview, you need to learn interview skills. Learning a technique for auditioning means the actor should go into the casting situation with more confidence.
Budding actors also learn the jargon associated with the Haber technique, referring to themselves as a person, not a "character".
"We want to get people away from the idea of being an actor and into the concept of being this person, living this life," he says. "If you approach it from that standpoint, you will think the thoughts that person will think, you won't be acting and that makes for a powerful performance." Gleason reckons everyone is able to work with the technique, because "it's not about being an actor, it's about being a human being," he says.
"The most important part is the relationship that you have with the other person in the scene, the more specific you make that relationship the more effective you are emotionally. You start with knowing who that person is and what they mean to you." He explains how, when preparing for an audition, an actor must take the imaginary set of circumstances and create a specific relationship. "Then you have to identify what you need out of the conversation. An actor would call this an intention. What's my intention? But you don't walk around your life with intentions. You want things. You need things. We don't want to approach it from an acting viewpoint but from a life viewpoint. Acting suggests presentation, but the more you present, the less we want to watch," he says.
Armed with this information, I go into Gleason's class of, mostly, young men and women, including one celebrity, pop star Rachel Stevens, formerly of S Club 7. I try not to stare, and concentrate on the script instead. It's a scene involving two friends, Woodruff and JT, who are at medical college together. Woodruff has suspected Hodgkins disease, and in the scene she is trying to explain to JT why she is going to keep her illness secret and forego treatment until she finishes college.
Everyone finds a quiet corner, going through the script, preparing for the first of two readings. We are all playing Woodruff. I am mostly worried about two things. Getting the word lymphoma out of my mouth correctly, and saying the line "My boy, you've always had a flair for the dramatic", without sounding cheesy, an impossible task as it turns out. After half an hour we queue up for our first reading. Even Rachel Stevens looks nervous.
In the room there is just a camera, and behind it Gleason, who is playing JT. I don't remember much. I am concentrating so hard on not missing the lines that I don't really look at JT when he is speaking, with the result that I am not acting so much as reading lines, and even I know that's the kiss of death when it comes to an audition.
When everyone has read, we go back upstairs to endure individual screenings and Gleason's critique. "If you don't like the way you look on television, then don't act," admonishes Jim as I sit on the floor with my fingers over my eyes not liking what I am seeing at all. But I wasn't terrible. Well, not as bad as I thought. My mime of closing the boot of the car probably is not going to trouble Marcel Marceau, but for a first effort, it wasn't bad. Jim is encouraging and, crucially, diplomatic in his criticism, although my fantasies that he is going to persuade me to give up the day job and take my chances at stardom in Hollywood are dimming by the minute.
"You were more nervous than a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs," he says, telling the rest of the class that after the reading I ran out of the room at 60 miles an hour. Some of the other students are impressive, including Rachel Stevens, although she is definitely at an unfair advantage, with her movie-star looks and golden skin.
The second read-through is better. As I speak the words, I am responding to what Gleason is saying, and I actually start to feel a bit emotional as I say the last line. "I know - it's difficult - but try to remember one thing. I'm the one who's sick, not you . . ." Watching it on screen the second time around isn't excruciating, just mildly embarrassing. Success.
At the end of the day, Murphy tells me that Margie Haber is in talks with a production company to create a reality TV show in which Irish actors will audition at the Irish Film Academy for a place at her Hollywood school. They'll be put up in the Beverly Wiltshire hotel and followed by cameras as they train with Haber in a bid for stardom. There is a steely glint in my eye as I wheel my bike across the cobblestones on the way home from the course. Now, more than ever, I'm ready for my close-up.
• Book a course at www.irishfilmacademy.com. See also www.margiehaber.com