Coaching actors

When actors have to play a piano on screen, they’re performing with a very particular and demanding co-star.

It’s not easy to make these encounters look natural and requires a particular form of preparation and rehearsal.

I have taught some of the best actors in the world how to play/look/be at the piano for TV and film. These include Anne Hathaway (Becoming Jane), Aneurin Barnard (Interlude in Prague), Taron Egerton and Alicia Vikander (Testament of Youth), Hugo Weaving (Patrick Melrose), Elizabeth Debicki (The Crown) and Hannah Dodd (Bridgerton).

🎭 If you’re preparing for a role with musical performance and need some coaching, get in touch.

Hugo Weaving - coached by Joe Thompson to play piano on film.

Ann Hathaway, coached by Joe Thompson, playing piano in "Becoming Jane"

Actor Elizabeth Debicki, coached by Joe Thompson, playing piano in an episode of The Crown (Netflix).

For Testament of Youth (2014) Taron Egerton and I worked from absolute scratch for twelve weeks to perfect four bars of Chopin but this remarkable young man pulled it off. I even made him cry when I got him to listen to what he was playing, rather than worrying about playing it. At the time he told me he was known for playing a fireman in a streamed TV series, but he had just finished a movie which would propel him into the limelight when it was released in the following Spring.

“I mean, it’ll be crazy Joe. My face will be on buses and stuff like that.”

And he wasn’t wrong. It’s a privilege to work with these actors before they are famous. The film he was talking about was Kingsman.

When coaching Anne Hathaway to play piano as Jane Austen (Becoming Jane), we concentrated on the piano as a haven, as an escape – so a certain stillness was required. The piece itself was difficult because it was sourced from Jane Austen’s personal collection. It took us six weeks of hard graft to get there.

Patrick Melrose was produced by, and starred Benedict Cumberbatch, a regular at the Ivy Club in the early days, and another actor who I knew before they were famous. His co-star, Hugo Weaving was one of my favourite piano students ever. A great guy who LOVES playing villains, in this case a paedophile, playing a waltz for one of his young victims. As usual, time was against us and he learned a waltz from scratch in just weeks. And I mean from scratch. “Ok Hugo, that’s middle C. Now find all the other C’s for me.”

“Joe, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

I LOVE a challenge.

A man in a white dress shirt and burgundy pants sitting on a piano with flames behind and underneath him, creating a fiery background.

A young woman with short brown hair is playing an upright piano in a warmly lit room. She is wearing a gray patterned dress and a wristwatch, with a focused expression on her face as she plays the piano.

A woman dressed in vintage attire, sitting at a grand piano in a softly lit, elegant room with curtains and classical decor.

Three people in historical clothing gathered around a piano in an ornate room, with two women standing and a man sitting at the piano.

Alicia Vikander was an easier challenge. Firstly, because she had the determination and discipline of a trained dancer, and secondly because she needed to appear as if she really did not want to play in the scene, rebelling against the father who had gifted the piano. No acting required – haha!

Joe on BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme

When Ryan Gosling had to learn piano for his role in ‘La La Land’ 2016, the BBC ran a piece on how he, as a non-pianist, prepared. Joe was a guest contributor and got to teach Today programme host Mishal Hussain some of the basics behind the piano:

Elisabeth Debicki (The Crown) was super cool and took to the piano straight away. In the scene we worked on, her Princess Diana was playing for the first time for Dodi Fayed. A fun gig for me, since both Diana and Dodi had, separately and at different times, approached me at the piano when I was playing in Harrods in the 90’s. Also, as a student I had provided the incidental music for the very first play by the writer of “The Crown”, Peter Morgan. At the time, we were just another pair of university students at the Edinburgh festival doing what we do for the sheer love of it.

The piano is central to Hannah Dodd’s role in Bridgerton, and once again I found myself working with the concentration and discipline of a trained dancer. A great production crew too.