Biography
Job Title: Senior Lecturer
Courses Taught: BA (Hons) Acting, BA (Hons) Actor Musician
Specialisms: Screen Acting, Stanislavsky-based Sanford Meisner Technique, Structured Improvisation on Camera.
Philip has been intensely interested in film and film acting since childhood.
Spellbound by the work of Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Stanley Kubrick, Sidney Lumet and the Coen Brothers (amongst others) he pursued his interests as a BA student at Exeter University, focussing in his final year on Spielberg's early films. Inspired by his acting experiences whilst collaborating with the theatre, television, and short story writer Robert Shearman, Philip went on to study acting at the Central School of Speech and Drama.
Despite working as a professional actor over a number of years, it wasn't until Philip resumed his training in the Stanislavsky-based Sanford Meisner Technique that he began to fully appreciate the qualities that underpin a compelling screen performance.
Philip continued to investigate and explore acting on camera for many years as Head of the Screen Acting Department at the International School of Screen Acting.
Taking advantage of the extensive facilities available at ISSA, Philip worked as a director, writer and editor, overseeing both the graduate and advanced graduate courses. Continually looking to develop and improve his methodology, he sought to adapt and evolve approaches to screen acting that afforded actors the greatest degree of authentic expression within the technical framework of the film-making medium.
As well as devising screen acting courses for City Academy and Southbank University, Philip co-founded ‘Screen Actors London’, a company established to help train professional actors seeking to advance their careers in film and television. He is the author of an optioned feature screenplay and, as a member of the writing collective ‘Writer's Ink’, continues to develop feature and serialised screenwriting projects.
Philip is a passionate advocate for film as a uniquely collaborative art form that has the power to immerse, transport and transform an audience.
