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California Institute of the Arts

BFA: Acting

School of Theater

Play on a stage depicting a recently deceased person lying on a wooden desk as others surround her and mourn her body. All are dressed in colonial-era costume.

An Experiment with an Air Pump, directed by Reena Dutt, 2024.

The art and craft of performance

Designed to inspire and prepare the next generation of theater artists of today, the four-year BFA in Acting offers comprehensive training for innovative actors, focusing on the development of body, voice, emotions, and mind as versatile instruments for performance. Our BFA program empowers students to become well-rounded actors by exploring diverse media and methods, all while paving a path guided by your passions as you articulate your own stories.

Small group of students in an acting class sitting cross-legged on a stage floor

Classically centered training, with an eye toward the future

BFA Acting

At CalArts, we nurture and inspire visionary actors who aspire to work on stage, film, television, voiceover, and across all media platforms. Through rigorous study and performance supported by mentorship from our renowned faculty, you’ll develop as an emerging performer prepared to pursue—or create—your own creative and professional path.

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The intensive, four-year BFA program in Acting is designed to prepare you for the demands of a professional acting career across a variety of media. With a focus on the tools needed to succeed across a shifting creative, social, and professional landscape, the program combines rigorous classes in acting, voice, speech, movement, and artistic practice with a wide range of performance and production experiences—each tailored to your individual needs and ambitions.

The curriculum is structured progressively with a strong emphasis on movement and physical expression as a means to unlock the imagination.

In your first year, you will study and perform significant texts across a vast landscape of the American canon. Emphasis is placed on developing students’ process and technique while expanding your imagination and artistry. The second year is devoted to the study of classical world texts in performance, with an increased focus on defining, developing, and deepening each student’s craft and individual vision.

In your third and fourth years of training, you and your peers will engage modern dramatic classics as well as contemporary film, television, poetry, and other narrative sources. Special emphasis is placed on developing camera technique as well as advanced scene study, all meant to address the importance of media to the actor.

Benefitting from its position within CalArts’ dynamic School of Theater, the country’s only independent institute encompassing the breadth of performing and visual arts under one roof, this unique program offers you the opportunity to collaborate with and learn alongside directors, designers, writers, dancers, musicians, filmmakers, animators, and visual artists. Our singular ecosystem of the arts enables you to follow your impulses beyond the traditional definitions of theater, build a lifelong network, and discover a myriad of professional pathways.

As a BFA actor, you’ll have the opportunity to work on projects and participate in workshops presented by the School of Theater and the CalArts Center for New Performance (CNP), and will be encouraged to collaborate with your peers throughout the Institute.

All BFA Acting students are required to pass a mid-residence and graduation review in order to complete the program and obtain their degree.
 

Interested in this program?

View our step-by-step application guide to learn more.

Start your application

Admission requirements

To be considered for the BFA Acting program, you must complete an application and all program-specific requirements, including a self-recorded video audition, an artist statement, and an audition. Live auditions are strongly recommended! Before applying, please familiarize yourself with the detailed application requirements and resources available to assist you in this important process.

Application requirements

Degree requirements

BFA Acting academic requirements.

In addition to work in your specific program, all undergraduate students must complete requirements in general education, which we call Critical Studies. This liberal arts curriculum is designed to enable students to consider aesthetic questions within larger socio-cultural, ethical, and political contexts.  

Critical Studies requirements

Minors and interdisciplinary opportunities

CalArts offers students the chance to pursue additional interests alongside their chosen discipline, such as a minor in Digital Arts, Critical Studies, or Arts Education.

Learn more about minors and interdisciplinary opportunities 

Courses you might take

What courses would you take as a BFA Acting student? Browse the courses offered in the School of Theater, one of the preeminent theater training grounds in the country.

School of Theater courses

Meet the faculty

At CalArts, faculty and students are collaborators, teaching, learning, and working together as members of our community of artists. 

What I found at CalArts was an openness and a curiosity that really interested me. Acting is a constant process of discovery, both internal and external, and CalArts really embodied that. It was the obvious choice.

headshot of CalArts alumni Garrett Gallego
Garrett Gallego BFA 20

First, we take Manhattan

Actors Showcase

As part of the transition from their training to the professional world, graduating BFA actors present their work to industry professionals in Los Angeles and New York—performing before agents, managers, casting directors, producers, directors, and various creative professionals in CalArts’ annual Actors Showcase.

A large group of actors, dressed in glamorous clothing in shades of green, poses on a theater stage

Some of our alumni

  • Hugo Armstrong (BFA 98), stage and screen actor (Waiting for Godot, Bleed Rail, Land of the Tigers) — Ovation Award
  • Tiffany Boone (BFA 09), screen actor (Hunters, Little Fires Everywhere, The Chi)
  • Alison Brie (BFA 05), screen and voice actor (Mad Men, Community, BoJack Horseman) — SAG Award
  • Don Cheadle (BFA 86), screen actor (Hotel Rwanda, Crash, House of Lies, War Machine in MCU) — Golden Globe Award, Academy Award nomination
  • Ty Defoe (BFA 04), performance artist, activist, and writer (Straight White Men, Come to Me Great Mystery: Native American Healing Songs) — Grammy Award
  • Ed Harris (BFA 75), stage and screen actor (Westworld, The Truman Show, Apollo 13, The Hours, Game Change), director (Pollock) — 2 Golden Globe Awards, 4 Academy Award nominations
  • David Hasselhoff (73), “The Hoff,” screen actor (Baywatch), pop singer
  • Bill Irwin (72), clown, stage and screen actor (Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, Interstellar, Rachel Getting Married), director, playwright —Tony Award, MacArthur “genius” fellowship
  • Katey Sagal (72), screen and voice actor (Sons of Anarchy, Married with Children, Futurama), singer-songwriter — Golden Globe Award
  • Cecily Strong (BFA 06), stage and screen actor, comedian (Saturday Night Live, Schmigadoon!)
  • Catherine Sullivan (BFA 92), artist, director and filmmaker — Herb Alpert Award in the Arts

More School of Theater alumni

From Meisner to Marvel: A Conversation with Don Cheadle

Alumni Story

“I had an amazing time at CalArts. I wouldn’t trade it for the world. The friends I made there are still lifelong friends. [We] took the initiative and performed plays on our own in the Black Box Theater, no help from anybody. We just did ‘em. We did Fugard plays, ‘Master Harold’ … and the Boys, and The Island, too. Everybody came.”

Actor Don Cheadle, wearing a light blue suit, runs down a flight of stairs amid an audience of people. Everyone reaches out their hands to receive high-fives as he runs past.

The Center for New Performance

The professional producing arm of CalArts, established to provide a unique artist- and project-driven framework for the development and realization of original theater, music, dance and interdisciplinary projects.

A group of actors, wearing bright colored clothes, reach toward a black box. The stage behind them is a projected image.

Closed Tomorrow by CNP artists-in-residence Chen Wu-kang and Sun Ruey-horng.

Gallery

Want to learn more?

We got you. Our Admissions team is all about providing the information you need to decide if CalArts is right for you. We’re excited to connect with you for a tour of our legendary campus, a virtual info session, or at one of our admissions events across the country or around the world. Take the next step—we’re here to help.