Scott Vickers
“Actors need the same sort of mindset support that athletes receive”
Q&A NOV 30, 2021 BY GIVERNY MASSO
Scott Vickers began his career as an actor – with highlights including Chicago in the West End and the BBC’s River City – before moving into directing and film production, with recent credits including horror film Matriarch. Vickers tells Giverny Masso about his varied career journeyand how actors can train their mindsets for auditions…
How did you get into acting?
Both my sisters went to dancing, acting and singing classes at a very young age, and I was the youngest brother that got roped into it. I was good at it and I started getting put into professional shows. I went to stage school for a short amount of time, and I got my first professional job as an adult as a dancer at Moulin Rouge in Paris. From there I did various other theatre shows, including Chicago for three years in the West End.
What inspired the move into directing?
I studied screenwriting and cinematography during my 20s, but the big thing for me was when I was in Chicago. Fellow cast member Terence Maynard said to me: “You need to be a screen actor, you’re really good at it”. He gave me the push.
I landed TV roles and I spent a lot of time on set and started to think: ‘I want to be on the creative side of this.’ I continued to train, I did loads of short films and I continued to act because it paid the bills. I landed a leading role in River City in Scotland, which I did for four years. That allowed me time to train as a director because I got to work with about 50 different directors. I had amazing success in my first feature film Matriarch, which was taken on by Lionsgate. That opened up doors for me to gain credibility as a director.
As a director, what have you learned from auditioning actors?
There is a culture that is bizarrely specific to British actors – it doesn’t happen so much with American actors – of never wanting to work with a script and always wanting to be off book. It’s taught in drama schools as well. The thing is, once you go to an audition and you’ve got half an hour and you’re given the script, your performance is going to suffer if you’re trying to look away from the script. If you look at American actors, they don’t have that.
What inspired you to set up training for actors to help hone their mindset for auditions?
I used to see actors in auditions make very similar mistakes in their approach, and I saw a need for a specific type of training. I have auditioned hundreds of actors, and I was starting to think about the difference between the actors coming in and delivering a brilliant role and the ones falling short. It’s not talent, so what is it?
Luckily, I married one of the world-leading mindset specialists Nicola Vickers. I said: ‘We need to give actors access to this because there’s nothing out there.’ This is a very specific thing for people that aren’t experiencing mental illness, but know they get anxious and it affects their performance. In the same way athletes get that type of support, actors need it as well.
CV Scott Vickers
Training: Merseyside Dance and Drama Centre (1992) and various courses at Raindance (early 2000s)
First professional role: Dancer at Moulin Rouge in Paris (1996)
Agent: ESRL Management