I am a 13 year old girl (Uk) and I want to become a young actress can someone help me please?

[Cogito]

If you are serious about wanting to act, you should start by reading every play you can get hold of, reading books, getting into a good acting school (like Stagecoach), taking singing and dance lessons, joining a good youth drama group or community theatre, and learning everything you can.

Nothing you are taught at school is a waste of time – you never know what is going to be really useful for you as an actor, and even stuff like history, geography, science, cooking, maths, etc, will probably come in handy when you least expect it.

Actors need to be very intelligent, able to understand loads of subjects, well-read, for example able to read Shakespeare and so on. It’s no good reading a script if you can’t understand what your character and the others are talking about!

Work hard at all your school subjects and get as many GCSEs as you can so you can get onto a college course in Drama or Performing Arts, with extras like Psychology, English, Sociology, etc.

After A Levels, you’ll be able to apply to get into a drama school, although these are all very hard to get into. Up to 5,000 applicants apply for 24 places, in each school, every year. Unfortunately, if you don't get into one of the drama schools you won't be able to get an agent, and without an agent, you can't get any auditions.

It’s essential to have some other skill which you can use to earn money in between acting jobs – you’ll need it! Typing, bar work, office work, shop work – anything you can do, really, but ideally train in some job you can work freelance so you’ll be able to take time off whenever you need to for auditions and the occasional paid acting job. Make sure you quite enjoy it too, as you’ll probably spend more time doing than that acting!

Just bear in mind that all that hard work isn't enough - you also need huge talent, dedication, determination, resilience and luck.

And sadly, the best that almost all actors will ever get is 2 or 3 weeks paid acting work a year - that's the average - and will never get more than a few minor roles in small productions.

Watch any movie, and count the number of actors in the cast list at the end which you hardly noticed - 'fifth bad guy', 'blonde prostitute', 'cop with ladder' and so on - they all imagined themselves up there at the top, but for the vast majority, that's as good as it gets.

You are looking at years of hard work, very little glamour, terrible rates of pay – if any – doing odd jobs just to pay the bills while you’re auditioning for acting work. It’s not something you should even be considering unless you’re totally passionate about acting and can’t imagine doing anything else.

You’ll probably never be famous, or make much money, but if it’s what you really want, go for it. If it’s just a nice idea because it sounds fun and exciting and so on, forget it.

Good luck!