There are schools all over the world teaching acting to actors. Where people sit around all day running lines and giving their characters life with a fake paunch, a pronounced slouch, or a carefully crafted wobble. They get critiqued by teachers who look them up and down and then listen as they deliver words written long, long ago.
But you don’t need to go to school to be an actor. Maybe if you want to play lots of different parts and learn how to do a cockney accent that isn’t just a Michael Caine impression. Then it can help even the most naturalistic of thespians.
And method acting, while admirable, can be quite annoying if you have to share a cab or God forbid a meal with an artisanal cobbler with a foot fetish or a budding psychopath preparing for a part. Some people simply choose to live their lives as if acting is not a thing. As if movies and plays aren’t real. Then one day they are called upon to use the skills accrued over a lifetime. For some people, acting coaches help about as much as parole officers. That is to say, only a little.
Instead of hiring an actor to play a chef, you could hire an actual chef. The same goes for landscapers, cops, and yes, mobsters. But for the last one, it takes more than a closet full of track suits and love of cured meats to pull it off. You need the ability to say “oooh” in hundreds of different ways. Your hands need to have an accent thicker than your average paisan from Sheepshead Bay. And your hair can’t ever be out of place, unless you find yourself wandering through the barren pinelands of central New Jersey. Though that’s the exception, not the rule.
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