Nick Mancuso – Professor of Acting
Born in Calabria, Italy and raised in Canada and the US, Nick Mancuso is a respected name on the big and small screen around the world, an award-winning actor (including the Canadian Oscar, the “Genie”) and numerous Best Actor awards in international film festivals. With over 120 credits on films, he has starred as well in four major TV series, and more than 150 plays, working over the years in a dozen countries and three languages; he has played side by side with actors including Sophia Loren, Kim Basinger, Catherine Deneuve, Steven Seagal, John Savage, Eric Bogosian, Saul Rubinek, Peter Coyote, Carole Laure, Christopher Lambert, Bonnie Bedelia, Stacy Keach, Valerie Kaprisky, Burt Young and many more. He has worked with directors and writers including Arthur Hiller, Charlton Heston, Leonard Cohen, Lewis Furey, Stephen J Cannell, and others. Nick is also a film producer and writer with decades of credits and has written and performed in plays around the world from LA to Romania. Mr. Mancuso is also a prolific artist with a history of exhibits of his paintings and digital art throughout the world.
Nick has a degree in Behavioral Psychology and following over 40 years in the field has by now taught many aspiring actors as well as professionals, written a book (“Acting [is] for Everyone”), and created a unique method he offers called T.O.P. System, drawing from his own experience and the works of Stanislavski, Chekov, Meisner, Viola Spolin, Uta Hagen, Boleslavski, Herbert Bergoff and Piero Dusa; its theoretical roots also lie in the works of the semanticist-scientist Alfred Korzybski, Buckminister Fuller, Cybernetics, Quantum Physics, B.F. Skinner, Carl Jung, G.I. Ouspenski, and many others. In 2014 he founded the Nick Mancuso Acting Academy in Toronto, Canada, and for the past few years has also been instrumental in producing films, documentaries and cultural projects in his home town of Mammola, in Calabria.
RIFS is honored to have Nick join our growing and prestigious faculty, offering courses in acting to talented newcomers and professionals alike.
