Susan Batson Studios NEW YORK
Stanislavski, Strasberg, Meisner, Adler, Berghoff, Hagen, Mamet…now BATSON.
Actor, writer, director, producer, teacher, and coach Susan Batson has been called an “alchemist” by the New Yorker. In private consultation on film sets all over the world and in her New York acting studio, Susan Batson has enjoyed the privilege of training and mentoring Nicole Kidman, Lady Gaga, Juliette Binoche, Oprah Winfrey, Tyler Perry, Tom Cruise, Kerry Washington, Zac Efron, Chris Rock, Jamie Foxx, Liv Tyler, Jennifer Connelly, Kirsten Dunst, Laverne Cox, Common, Janet Jackson, Rihanna and countless other actors searching for truthful connections between themselves and the characters they play. Nicole Kidman, who has worked closely with Susan for more than twelve years, hails her as a uniquely insightful acting coach with “a hell of a lot of pure talent,” while Oscar winner Juliette Binoche praises Susan’s ability to “shake you like a tree and get the fruits down.” Susan Batson was publicly thanked by Kidman after receiving her Oscar for The Hours, and by Tom Cruise in his Golden Globes acceptance speech for Magnolia.
Like all great performers, Nicole Kidman approached her role in The Hours as a creative collaboration. Kidman knew that portraying Virginia Woolf on screen required a truth that she as the actor and Woolf as the character shared. Enter Susan Batson. Batson’s process gave Kidman the tools to find that truth and honed her Oscar Winning performance from the inside out.
Batson graduated from Emerson College’s Theater Arts Program and received a John Hay Whitney Fellowship to study with Uta Hagen and Herbert Berghof in New York. She was in the original cast of Hair and became a protege of theater legend Joseph Papp and Harold Clurman. She is a member of the Actors Studio and a recipient of a New York Drama Critics Award, an LA Drama Critics Award, and an Obie. She has worked with directors like Spike Lee, Michael Haneke, Erik Poppe, Kim Farrant, and Jane Campion to name a few. Susan Batson was also a producer of the hugely successful Broadway revival and television production of A Raisin in the Sun, starring Sean Combs.
Susan Batson is the author of the book “Truth: Personas, Needs, and Flaws in the Art of Building Actors and Creating Characters” and has been profiled in the New Yorker, the New York Times, Variety, the Hollywood Reporter, and Backstage.