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Actors can be needy, fragile creatures\u2014they crave the spotlight, but often it just amplifies their insecurities, like a magnifying glass burning ants. When Judith Weston began working with directors, she was startled to discover how many were scared<\/em> of their stars. \u201cDirectors come to me and say, \u2018How do I keep control?\u2019 \u201d says Weston, sitting in the idyllic back garden of her home near Venice Beach in LA. \u201cIf I tell them they don\u2019t have to have control, it\u2019s a relief to them.\u201d<\/p>\n Weston has been coaching directors for close to 35 years, instructing them, among other things, in the care and feeding of the actorly temperament. \u201cI find it almost like seeing a directors\u2019 therapist,\u201d says Lucy Tcherniak, a director on the streaming series Station Eleven<\/em> and forthcoming Apple TV+ series Sunny.<\/em> \u201cYou\u2019re surrounded by people, but directing can be a really lonely job.\u201d<\/p>\n Many devotees discovered Weston through her book Directing Actors: Creating Memorable Performances for Film and Television,<\/em> updated last year for its 25th anniversary. Over the years, she has amassed a long list of clients, including Taika Waititi, Alejandro Gonz\u00e1lez I\u00f1\u00e1rritu, Ava DuVernay, Boots Riley, and Alma Har\u2019el. Waititi says he considers Weston a creative, maternal figure in his life: \u201cShe\u2019s basically Yoda, except she\u2019s not small and she\u2019s not green.\u201d When he was making Thor: Ragnarok,<\/em> he asked her what she thought of the screenwriters\u2019 script, and she blurted, \u201cWell, it reads like it was written by a seven-year-old boy.\u201d Even this, he told Weston, inspired him: He could definitely<\/em> get excited about directing a movie that a kid wrote.<\/p>\n Weston is usually gentler. She greets me in a bright turquoise tunic, talking quietly and radiating empathy. A former actor, Weston offers concrete ways to make performers feel like collaborators rather than dollhouse figures moved around on a set. \u201cI want directors to know how wildly frightening acting can be, how vulnerable you are when you\u2019re out there on stage or in front of the camera,\u201d she writes in Directing Actors.<\/em> That sometimes means doing a Freaky Friday<\/em>\u2013style swap where directors try acting. David Chase has never forgotten the experience he had in a Weston workshop decades ago, just before creating The Sopranos.<\/em> He and another student were playing janitors: \u201cWe both really got into it, and when it was over, I felt like I had left my body. It was almost like an LSD trip. And I thought, Wow, no wonder actors want to do this.\u201d It also struck him how hard it must be to maintain that out-of-body feeling if your director is asking you to do 20 takes. \u201cThe whole filmmaking process is kind of unwelcoming to the actor,\u201d Chase says. You have to be sensitive\u2014even to the guys down at the Bada Bing.<\/p>\n I\u00f1\u00e1rritu, who\u2019s consulted with Weston several times since he first took her workshop in the 1990s, also found that his mindset changed when it came to directing actors: \u201cThe surprise was that something potentially so scary could turn into something so enjoyable.\u201d<\/p>\n Now in her<\/strong> 70s, Weston concentrates on one-on-one Zoom sessions with directors\u2014often deep-diving into specific scenes or characters. It\u2019s a long way from the working-class Connecticut town where she grew up. When she was four, her mother developed polio, and young Judith was sent away from home for a while. It was a traumatic experience, and she found an escape in fairy tales. \u201cIn the real world, you can feel something and the plot doesn\u2019t change,\u201d she says, whereas in the world of fiction, \u201cfeelings have consequences.\u201d<\/p>\n By her early 20s, Weston was in Manhattan toiling at clerical jobs designated for women at insurance companies and banks\u2014the kind of places where, as she later wrote in a 1970s essay titled \u201cThe Secretarial Proletariat,\u201d female employees were called \u201cgirls\u201d and \u201chad no rights, only duties.\u201d In 1968, she found her way into an early women\u2019s liberation meeting and became part of a group that merged consciousness-raising, activism, and guerrilla theater. Weston helped create a giant Miss America puppet wrapped in chains for the legendary 1968 protest of the pageant in Atlantic City. Later, as a founding member of the group WITCH, she took part in theatrical protests like the hexing of Wall Street and the Bridal Un-Fair, an invasion of a wedding industry convention.<\/p>\n After moving to the Bay Area in 1970, Weston planned to continue her activist work but instead became an actor. \u201cIn the early 1970s, people were looking for gurus,\u201d she says. \u201cYou\u2019d find a teacher and feel, This person is opening up the world for me.\u201d So when someone recommended acting coach Jean Shelton, Weston embraced this new calling. Later, in Los Angeles, she landed parts in TV movies and shows like Little House on the Prairie<\/em> and Newhart.<\/em> But as the parts grew more generic, Weston\u2019s enthusiasm crumbled. Shelton had always told her she would be a great teacher, so in 1984 she hung out her shingle.<\/p>\n Listening to Weston<\/strong>, I think about the cranky veteran showrunner played by Paul Reiser in the Hulu series Reboot.<\/em> \u201cPissed off actors\u2014they\u2019re like children!\u201d he says. \u201cYou jingle some shiny keys and you promise \u2019em a cookie and they\u2019ll stop crying.\u201d But wrangling talent isn\u2019t actually that easy. Weston thinks we have a toxic attitude toward performers, simultaneously worshipping and disdaining them. When I mention the public mockery of Jeremy Strong\u2019s devotion to Method acting, she says firmly, \u201cThere\u2019s so many ways to put down actors. And I just don\u2019t want anybody to ever do any of them.\u201d<\/p>\n