drama with a lisp

[11112222]

DD wants to pursue acting as a career. She is 15 (year 11). The trouble is she has a slight lisp. She had speech therapy when she was younger and never quite managed to overcome the lisp. She does LAMDA, and it has never been picked up, but I wonder if it is realistic to go into acting with a small speech impediment??

It never stopped Sean Connery

Acting/drama is on a massive push to be more inclusive and more representative of the general population so it is definitely worth giving it ago.
Very few courses are single threat now even 'acting' courses require some dancing and singing nowadays how does she feel about those.

Sorry meant to press return not Post.
Looking at degree courses at places like Lippa, Mountview and Fourth Monkey will give her idea what the courses involve. Look at graduate destinations is this the 'type' of acting she could see herself doing.
Degree you will get funding for and gives you a qualification that will allow you to teach. Diploma no funding and no teaching qualification.
Remember all of these places are looking for the full range of casting types otherwise if they only took leggy blondes they would all be competing for the same roles.
I do think that you people considering this type of career need to realise that they will spend time as a barista or waitress whilst auditioning. My own daughter is heading into MT has worked part time ( initially reluctantly) as a vets receptionist for me - then discovered that there are load of temp shifts in the emergency clinics listed on indeed at £21 per hour and can see that working as a night receptionist would be a great way to support her MT career.

Hi Lonecat Thanks for replying. Yes, she understands the industry, DH (used to, until covid) works in theatre, but on the musical side, so she is realistic I think. She is autistic, but I don't think this will necessarily work against her. Acting is what she enjoys. I think she'd be fine.

She's waiting to do grade 7 LAMDA, and sings and dances ok as well.

We are at the point where we have to decide what to do about 6th form.
The options are:
1 - her choice - extended BTEC acting course affiliated to Bristol Old Vic, takes place in a theatre environment,
2 - my choice - A levels in Drama, Photography and Chemistry, at school.
This way, she could use her photography as a side line.
Looking at tv, and theatre, I don't remember hearing many lisps. Accents yes, but speech impediments not so much.

My worry is, it is all she wants to do, but I'm not sure she's good enough. how do you know?? As a (ex) professional musician, I had my grade 8 by age 13. But I know less about drama. My only actor friend went into the business after doing English/drama degree at uni. That's not going to work for dd. She's not doing eng lit for GCSE. (too many essays for her to cope with).
Any advice gratefully received….
Thank you!

@11112222 my daughter is at Read College in Reading. It is worth her looking at the sixth form OCR acting it is really small this year there are 4 in lower sixth and 5 in upper sixth, Seamus Allen is the director of Acting there. My DD is lower sixth MT ( there are just eight of them).
Students travel from all over Europe to do the Foundation Acting course with Seamus.

My dd is physically disabled and will be graduating from drama school this summer. Absolutely what @Lonecatwithkitten said about them not all being the same physical type. Drama schools need variety- otherwise their final shows would look a bit odd (and agents wouldn't be able to tell one face from another).

Dd did drama A-level and a BTEC in Acting, plus one more traditional A-level. She found the Acting BTEC really helpful.

It still took her time to get into drama school, but she was determined and worked for 2 years while auditioning.

One of the students on her foundation course became a photographer afterwards, specialising in actors' headshots.

If she does go to drama school, she will have to be very open to working with her voice and having every aspect of her speech discussed in front of other people. This won't necessarily be "we can't have actresses with a lisp, you know"; it will be "how can you make the most of your voice and its natural capacities". Dd has realised that she is going to need regular osteopath visits because having slightly legs of slightly uneven length, even though it isn't enough to cause limping, is affecting her breathing which means she can't get the maximum potential out of her voice.

And no, she won't ever know if she is "good enough". That is a risk one takes: you don't get a piece of paper that says "you have reached level x of acting". A lot of it is always going to be about what a casting agent thinks will fit at a particular moment in time. A classmate of dd's whom nobody thought was particularly outstanding got their first television contract on leaving the foundation course and has done very well ever since. I've seen them, looked very good to me, but there wasn't a way of knowing in advance that this particular person would do so well.

Thanks all.
Good to hear of the success stories.
I guess if she is determined, she will do whatever she needs to do.

Good luck to all your DC.

Could you look at getting some more speech therapy? Voice is pretty major part of actor’s toolkit & whilst it might not hold her back at A Level stage to get into RADA etc it might hold her back when she reaches this higher level.

There are quite a few actors with various degrees of lisp aren't there?