After opening chapters in Chandigarh and London, Anupam Kher‘s acting school, Actor Prepares, is all set to launch in Ahmedabad on July 20, 2009. On the cards is a school in South Africa as well.

“This phase of vigorous expansion reflects the high level of interest in Indian cinema and the entertainment business among the younger generation the world over,” says Kher, whose career spans a quarter century encompassing almost 400 films. “I believe that acting, like any craft, can be taught, learnt and perfected,” says Kher.

Kher is the only actor in the world who has become a teacher while still actively pursuing his career. “My interactions with the current crop of international directors, be it Danny Boyle or Ang Lee or Gurinder Chaddha, keeps me abreast of global trends that are emerging in world cinema and I pass on such knowledge to my students,” he says.

The popularity of his three-month full-time Actor Prepares programme is reflected in the fact that in Mumbai, it is running house full for the past one year and the rejection rate is almost 1:1. Scores of its alumni, from Deepika Padukone onwards, have bagged roles in major Hindi and south Indian films.

At Actor Prepares London, where the classes are held in conjunction with the Ealing Institute of Media (next to the famed Ealing Studios), several students have successfully auditioned for roles with Mumbai directors and film production companies.

The key to the success of Actor Prepares, apart for Kher’s personal coaching sessions, lies in its holistic approach. “Acting cannot be taught in isolation; it needs to be viewed as part of a larger exercise of personality development. Hence in our programmes everywhere, we also include yoga, dance, martial arts, voice and diction and so on,” says Kher.

In Ahmedabad too, the 2.5 acre campus has a swimming pool, a state-of -the-art gymnasium and a horse-riding school, not found in any other acting school anywhere.

Kher’s belief in a holistic approach to acting has been appreciated by none other than Deepika Padukone, his student who passed out in August 2005. “In the three months I have spent at Actor Prepares, I feel I have learnt a lot. I have not only improved as an actor but also as an individual and human being. All I can say is that a lot of knowledge has been given to us about acting, which will show only with time and experience. It is not something that can happen overnight. But the finer details about me as a person and the changes in me are more visible. The classes at Actor Prepares have not only taught me the details of acting but groomed me overall and has made me a more confident person,” says Deepika.

Joining her in acclaim of the teaching practices have been Oscar-winning director Danny Boyle and Oscar nominee Shekhar Kapur, both of whom were impressed by the quality of the training programme at Actor Prepares, after guest lectures at the school in Mumbai.

It is this emphasis on the larger matrix of the personality that Anupam Kher is perfecting a programme on life-coaching, called The Change Within. “I got the idea from my life in which I roller-coastered along from failure to success to almost failure again. And I realised that through it all, I have not really changed as a person. So, I started discovering the roots of my equanimity and I rediscovered the wisdom of my grandfather’s sayings,” says Kher.

Kher’s life has already been turned into a highly successful theatre production Kuchh Bhi Ho Sakta Hai, which has toured several countries. And soon, he will be taking leaves from the book of his life and teaching The Change Within to those signing up for inner truths from the acting guru.

Source: buzz18.in.com