The Liverpool acting coach who’s helped launch some brilliant careers – including Jodie Comer’s

Liverpool acting coach Carol Wilson began her career with an after-school class in Childwall in the ‘90s.

Now she’s a sought-after coach and agent in the UK and USA, with a long list of students who’ve gone on to screen success – including actress Jodie Comer.

Jodie was one of those who went to Carol’s CALS theatre school in Belle Vale which she opened after her classes took off.

Since then she’s coached talented young actors who’ve appeared in TV series and films including Westworld, The Famous Five, The Northman, Jurassic World, Game of Thrones and Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy.

All of them have one thing in common: the same special gift which Carol recognised in Jodie.

She explained:

“It’s something where they’re just able to connect to the character, to the storyline, to the circumstances. You see them and think, this is an old soul, this is somebody who just gets it. Jodie was that for sure.

“She was in my theatre school from 11 to about 16, and I remember giving her a piece called Hillsborough to do for the Liverpool Festival. She was just phenomenal. The adjudicator gave her first place and said she could have sat and watched her all day. 

“You get kids like that, where you just know, and I love following all their careers. I have that pride in seeing what they achieve.”

Carol, who lives in Woolton, was a child actor herself – her first job was as one of Ken Dodd’s Diddymen – who went on to study at RADA.

But instead of pursuing her own acting in London, she returned home to Liverpool in her late teens and followed her brother into the police.

She spent 18 years in the force, with 10 in CID on serious crime, before a car accident left her with a broke a bone in her neck.

“It was either a desk job or leave, so I left. My daughter Lauren was in St Paschal Baylon at the time and the head was the brother of my old chief supt. I told him I was a trained actor and acting coach, and offered to do some acting with the children. 

“I went in after school for an hour and had 60 kids, then the next week I had over 100. It progressed from there, so I turned the upstairs of Boots in Belle Vale shopping centre into CALS Theatre School, teaching dancing, singing and acting.”

Carol’s students, ranging from age 3 to 21, regularly landed jobs on TV and alongside the classes she began producing and directing theatre productions.

When her daughter Lauren got a part in a movie and went to LA at 19, Carol found herself going backwards and forwards to visit. 

“A lot of the girls in my school would say ‘oh one day we might get to Hollywood’, so I thought, why are we waiting for one day? I said, ‘I could take you’. I wanted to give them a taste of what it’s like to be in the industry over there.

“We started Camera Ready events company and took a group of teenagers from Liverpool to LA. They opened the Chinese American Film Festival on Sunset Boulevard, performed at Universal Studios and met loads of casting directors. I even drove a bus and took them to see where the OC was filmed!”

That was 15 years ago and Carol has now achieved that rare thing of being in demand on both sides of the Atlantic.

“What got me in wasn’t the fact I was an acting coach or an agent, it was because people were fascinated that I used to be a cop in Liverpool,” she says.

She still offers on set and one-to-one coaching classes with her LSI Talent agency, and runs Camera Ready events for young people in the UK, Europe and USA. 

“Lauren and I put together the courses, I write the films, Lauren’s also a photographer so she does the headshots and behind the scenes photos, and we bring in a camera crew. 

“They’re making a movie so they’re behind the camera as well as in front of it, they do everything, so when they book a job and go on set they know exactly what happens. It gives them those tools and gets them ready.”

Carol has recently set up a production company, WildRaff, with her daughter and son Steven, and she’s been writing impactful short films to allow her students to gain even more real-world experience.

Seeing them succeed, whether it’s in the industry or not, means a lot.

“I have kids in all kinds of things who I coach now. I coach Casper, who played Renee Zellweger’s son in the latest Bridge Jones film, and I have Ollie in LA who was in Salem and Westworld with Anthony Hopkins.

“Matila Freeman has been with me since she was seven, she was Summer in Coronation Street and she’s in How to Get to Heaven from Belfast. Will Joseph is in the movie Young Washington coming out in July and I coach Bastian who plays Parker alongside Ryan Gosling in Hail Mary. 

“I always love seeing them all on TV or in a film. Every time, it’s so exciting and I’m just so happy for them.”

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