Mark Evans Studio

On a podcast I listened to this week, the actor Greg Wise talked about how hard it can be to separate who we are as people from the work we do as actors. When we audition, the people making the decision are looking at our faces, listening to our voices and watching what we do with the material. Then they decide whether they want us for the role. I can see why the distinction might get a little blurry. Then he said something that felt especially familiar. “It can make you really grumpy not to get a job.” Yes, Greg. It absolutely can. Sometimes we want the job because we love the script. Sometimes we want it because we can already imagine how much fun we’d have with the people making it. And sometimes we’ve looked at the dates and mentally spent the money. By the time we hear they’ve gone another way, we’ve got a whole little future to give up. Some of that future was built during a twenty-minute train ride, which is quite impressive when you think about it. What’s hard is how quickly we...

  I’ve been thinking about how often we can be somewhere without really being there. In a rehearsal room, at dinner, listening to a friend. Our bodies have arrived, but our attention is answering an email, revisiting yesterday’s conversation or organising next Thursday. I can apparently do all three while looking directly at someone. A questionable skill. In the latest episode of Craft: Sweat and Joy , “Living in the Age of Absence - Community, Care and Courtesy,” Patsy Rodenburg says: “our natural selves are bigger than the habits of absence.”  I find that hopeful. The suggestion that presence is something we can return to. Something already available beneath the noise. As actors, we spend a great deal of time preparing. We learn the words, investigate the circumstances and make choices. Then comes the uncomfortable business of allowing another person to affect us. All that preparation has to leave room for what actually happens. We’ve all experienced a scene where we’re wait...

 I recently came across a quote from the wonderful Olympia Dukakis that really struck a chord with me. “The reasons that somebody becomes an actor or performer and the reasons that somebody stays an actor or performer are very different things and a career is how you bridge that gap. It has to change from bringing home prizes for mommy and daddy into standing in my own purpose, standing in my own power.” I think there’s something rather brilliant about that. Most of us begin acting because of how it makes us feel. Perhaps we loved the attention, the applause, the encouragement from a teacher, or the sheer joy of pretending to be someone else. Perhaps, for the first time, we felt truly seen. There’s nothing wrong with any of those reasons. They’re wonderful reasons to begin. But are they enough to sustain us? At some point, if we’re going to build a meaningful and lasting relationship with this craft, our motivation has to evolve. We have to stop relying on other people to tell us w...

  A couple weeks ago, our 7 week old baby boy spent eight days in hospital. We were incredibly fortunate. We caught a potentially life-threatening bug before it had fully developed and taken hold, and he received the care he needed. But for eight days, our world became very small. It was him. Our daughter. My husband. Our family. Our friends. That was pretty much it. And it’s amazing how quickly all the other stuff that can consume us suddenly becomes completely irrelevant. The audition. The job. The email you haven’t answered. The career plan. The opportunity you’re worried you might miss. The irritating thing somebody said. Whether you’re doing enough. Whether you’re achieving enough. For those eight days, I genuinely couldn’t have cared less. And I was reminded of something I think we can easily forget, particularly as actors. When real, hard shit happens in your life, your career isn’t going to pick you up. Your people are. The people who texted us every day. The people who che...

 The leaves are turning, the days are shortening, and apparently we’re all expected to start liking pumpkin. Transitions can unsettle us. We get comfortable. We find a rhythm. Then something shifts. But perhaps, as artists, we can meet change with curiosity rather than resistance. How is this next season going to affect me? What might it bring out in me? Energy, melancholy, excitement, irritation, hope? Whatever arrives is useful. It becomes part of the ever-growing collection of experiences we carry into our work. And feelings are remarkably temporary things. We can transition into frustration in seconds and, sometimes just as quickly, transition out of it. We are not required to remain loyal to a feeling simply because it arrived first. The same is true in our acting. We can become strangely attached to our idea of a scene. We decide where the emotional moment happens, what the scene is “about”, how a particular line should feel. Then we spend the scene trying to preserve it. But...

There are moments in this industry when the business of acting can become louder than the reason we started. The emails. The auditions. The waiting. The self-tapes. The callbacks that don’t become bookings. The endless wondering about what’s next. And sometimes, without even realizing it, something starts to shift. The excitement gets quieter. The work feels heavier. We become more focused on getting somewhere than on the extraordinary privilege of being an actor. So, as we head into the fall, I want us to remind ourselves of something: Acting is incredible. We get to step into another person’s life and, for a few minutes, experience the world through their eyes. We get to tell stories that make people laugh, cry, question, understand, remember and feel less alone. We get to play. We get to imagine. We get to collaborate with wildly talented, passionate, strange, generous, complicated human beings and create something that did not exist before we walked into the room. That is extraordi...

  There is a particular kind of energy we can bring to our lives that feels productive, but often isn’t. The frantic energy. The tense determination. The feeling that if we just push harder, move faster, concentrate more intensely, somehow we will get better results. But what if the opposite is true? What if we could accomplish just as much, perhaps even more, by dialing down the frantic energy and simply taking a breath? It is surprising how effectively we can work, create, perform and communicate when we remove some of the tension from the equation. We don’t necessarily need to be less committed. We don’t need to care less. We simply need to stop gripping so tightly. Tension rarely serves us in life, and it definitely doesn’t serve us in our acting. Think about a scene that requires enormous emotional intensity. The instinct can be to tighten everything - the jaw, shoulders, stomach, hands, breath. We think that because the character is experiencing tension, our body must be tens...

  Ten months ago, my son was smaller than a sesame seed. Just sit with that for a moment. Today, I’m looking at his tiny ears - perfectly formed. His fingernails, impossibly delicate. I listen to the little grunts and groans he makes as his lungs learn to do a job they were never asked to do before. For nine months he relied entirely on an umbilical cord. Now, every breath is his own. Every cry, every stretch, every yawn is another step in his remarkable introduction to the world. How is any of this possible? The more I stare at him, the more I realise how disconnected many of us have become from the sheer wonder of nature. We walk past trees without noticing the way they continue to grow. We barely think about the complexity of a flower blooming or a bird navigating thousands of miles across continents. Creation surrounds us every second of every day, yet we’ve somehow become numb to it. And then a child arrives and reminds you that life itself is the greatest miracle you’ll ever ...

Life has a funny way of reminding us what really matters. Last week, my family and I jumped on a plane to San Diego because it looked like our son was about to arrive. Our incredible surrogate was showing signs that things were moving quickly, so we packed our bags, kissed our routines goodbye, and headed west. A week later... We're still waiting. We've spent three nights in a hotel, followed by several days in an Airbnb that could have benefited greatly from a deep clean, and now we're about to move into another Airbnb as we continue waiting for our little boy to make his entrance. Today, my four-year-old daughter quietly said, "I miss home." It was as though she'd reached into my own head and spoken my thoughts out loud. So we started making a list. "I miss my playroom," she said. "I miss our shower," I replied. "My toys." "Our coffee maker." "My bedroom." "Our bed." "The green car and my car s...

  I heard someone say something on a podcast recently that has been echoing around my head ever since: “Stop trying so hard to make the right choice.” It struck me because it feels so relevant to life in general, but especially to artists. And for us as actors, it couldn’t be more applicable. So much of an actor’s life is spent searching for “the right.” The right interpretation. The right emotion. The right objective. The right way to deliver a line. The right audition. The right agent. The right career move. We become convinced that somewhere out there is a correct answer, and if we can just think hard enough or prepare long enough, we’ll find it. But acting doesn’t work that way. Neither does life. The best work doesn’t come from trying to be right. It comes from being present. From listening. From responding truthfully. From allowing yourself to be actually affected by what’s happening instead of trying to manufacture the “correct” performance.  When you’re focused on maki...

  I recently heard a phrase on a friend’s podcast that resonated enough to want to share it with you all: “The opposite of shame is belonging.” The more I sat with it, the more I realized how deeply it applies to actors. The entertainment industry can unintentionally (and, let’s face it, sometimes intentionally) cultivate shame. We compare ourselves to others. We wonder if we’re talented enough, experienced enough, attractive enough, young enough, old enough, connected enough, or successful enough. We walk into rooms wondering if we deserve to be there at all.  Over time, that inner voice can become very powerful. Shame whispers, You don’t belong here.  But belonging says something entirely different.  Belonging says, You are enough exactly as you are. As actors, we often spend our careers searching for permission. Permission to take up space. Permission to be vulnerable. Permission to fail. Permission to be ourselves. The truth is, and those of you in our ongoing cl...

  Change is rarely comfortable. Even when it’s something we want, it often arrives wrapped in uncertainty, vulnerability, and a healthy dose of self-doubt. It asks us to leave behind what is familiar and step into territory we can’t fully predict. Yet, when I look back on my life, I realize that every meaningful chapter began with a willingness to embrace change. I was born on a farm in North Wales. As a child, the world felt small, defined by fields, livestock, and a close-knit community. It was a wonderful place to grow up, but if you’d told that young boy where life would eventually take him, he probably wouldn’t have believed you. Today, I own a home in New Jersey and have a family of my own. The distance between those two realities is measured in far more than miles. It represents countless decisions, risks, and moments of uncertainty. Moving countries, building a career, creating a home, and establishing roots in a completely different place all required embracing change, eve...

Lately I’ve been listening to the West End cast recording of the Benjamin Button musical, and it’s been sitting with me in a way I didn’t expect.  I mean, it’s STUNNING! Really wonderful music. But, what I’m referring to is something else. Like the film The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, the story follows a man who is born old and ages in reverse. Listening to the music this time, I found myself thinking less about the fantasy of it and more about the philosophy behind it. Imagine entering the world with all the wisdom you would ever possess. You already understand what matters. You already know not to waste time. You already know which arguments aren’t worth having, which fears are unnecessary, and which moments deserve your full attention. And then, instead of your body slowly failing you as you age, it does the opposite. Every year you become stronger. More capable. More energetic. More physically free. It completely flips the human experience upside down. Because for most of ...

  I’ve written about ambivalence before, and I’m writing about it again deliberately. Not because I’ve run out of things to say, but because I think it’s one of those emotional experiences we constantly try to rush ourselves out of. We want certainty. We want clarity. We want to know exactly how we feel so we can make a clean decision and move on. But life rarely works that way. It’s one of the most valuable things my therapist ever helped me to understand. Our relationships to people, places, work, versions of ourselves, and even dreams can be deeply complicated. You can love something and still feel exhausted by it. You can miss someone and know they are not good for you. You can be grateful for a place while also wanting to leave it behind. These truths can exist at the same time. Ambivalence is uncomfortable because it asks us to tolerate contradiction. It asks us not to flatten our feelings into something simpler just because simplicity feels safer. Often, when we experience c...

I recently found myself in a long, winding conversation about artificial intelligence and the quiet fear that seems to follow it everywhere. Not the loud, cinematic kind of fear, but something subtler - a shared uncertainty about what comes next. The truth is, no one really knows how much of an impact AI will have on our world. We can make predictions, build models, and speculate endlessly, but the reality is that we are stepping into something fundamentally unpredictable. What struck me most was how this uncertainty lands hardest on young people. Students are choosing degrees, investing time, money, and identity into specific fields, only to face the possibility that those roles may not exist in the same way - or at all - by the time they graduate. Entire career paths could shift or disappear. Jobs that once required years of training might be performed faster, cheaper, and more efficiently by machines. It raises a difficult question: what does it mean to prepare for a future that ref...

  I was listening to Desert Island Discs recently and heard an interview with Oscar winner Jessie Buckley. She spoke openly about her struggles as a teenager - how deeply she felt everything, and how hard it was to contain that constant urge for big emotional expression. It made me reflect on something many actors and artists experience: we’re often required to feel more intensely than the average person. Of course, that doesn’t make those feelings any easier. In fact, being a sensitive artist can feel overwhelming - big, heavy, and, at times, inconvenient. There are moments when it might seem easier not to feel so much at all. And yet, our work gives those feelings purpose. Ours is one of the only professions where life’s challenges - and everything we learn from them - can be transformed into something meaningful. A bank teller doesn’t need to channel grief to do their job. An actor does. When a character is grieving, we are called upon to access something real, something lived. ...

I kicked off Thursday night's class last week by asking everyone to share one time they have felt tremendous joy as an actor in their lives. It reminded us all why we fell in love with this thing we’re so passionate about and allowed the class to be laid back, fun and playful - Joy filled! As actors - myself included - it’s easy to drift into a mindset where we’re chasing outcomes instead of experiences. We start measuring ourselves by bookings, callbacks, or how we think we’re being perceived. In that space, joy becomes conditional. It becomes something we earn, rather than something we bring with us. But the truth is, when joy leaves the room, our work suffers. We tighten, we overthink, and we lose the very thing that makes our performances compelling. When we prioritise joy, everything opens up. We give ourselves permission to play again. We take risks without the fear of failure looming over every choice. We listen more deeply, respond more honestly, and allow ourselves to be s...