Dee was a great source of inspiration when I needed her to work on a role with me. We approached acting from the perspective of a child - I tapped into my naivety and awe. It was sometimes like an Easter egg hunt looking for hidden ideas in the text. I had so much fun working with Dee always enjoying the search and discovery of text and character.

Matthew Modine - credits include: Full Metal Jacket, Memphis Belle, Shortcuts, Birdy, The New Hotel Hampshire, Mrs Soffel.

I had the privilege to be taught by Dee Cannon for three years at RADA. Not only did I find her classes insightful, revolutionary and enjoyable; on a much deeper level she has instilled in me a love and respect for the craft of acting. The notion of being instinctive, prepared and finding the truth in every character you play is at the core of her work and is something I will always hold on to. A wonderful and inspirational teacher.

Danny Mays. Credits include Atonement, BBC Drama Rehab, Mike Leigh’s Vera Drake and All Or Nothing

Dee has an extraordinary gift for developing and encouraging acting talent. Her dedication and ceaseless energy to help actors reach their full potential is remarkable.

She is very highly regarded in her field, not only for her work at RADA but also in her private coaching.

John Grant, London talent agent
Conway Van Gelder Grant

Working with Dee Cannon is rigorous. You get the honest truth about your acting abilities from Dee and she will push you to be the very best. Trust her and go with it. She knows what she’s doing. Since I trained with Dee, her words are with me at auditions, in rehearsal rooms and on TV and film sets. She’s tough but by God she’s brilliant.

Katherine Kelly, RSC.  Credits include Coronation Street and feature film Mischief Nights.

During my ten years as head of the acting course at RADA, Dee provided invaluable support as acting tutor to the final-year students in the public productions I directed in the Academy’s theatres. These ranged from high farce (e.g. Feydeau’s Hotel Paradiso) to intense, serious drama (such as R C Sherriff’s Journey’s End). No matter what the style or the period of the script,
Dee’s no-nonsense, clear and thorough work has helped many an actor to discover a firm basis of reality in his or her characterisation.

In the case of comedy, this has meant the audience laughed in response to performances with true resonance, not at shallow caricatures. In serious plays, the audience would be genuinely moved and not invited to wallow in sentimentality.

Such work not only brings great value to the cast and the production. It also means that a few individual classes with Dee may save hours of time in company rehearsals.

Ellis Jones, Head of Acting, RADA 1993-2003

Dee’s work at the Academy with many generations of students has been at the highest level.

Nick Barter, Principal, RADA (1993 - 2007)

Dee Cannon offered me a different approach to acting! I had studied a variety of different ‘methods’ of acting for nearly seven years. But all this study was bringing me more into my head and was definitely not bringing me any closer to finding truth in my work.

It was Dee who taught me that you could do all the research, play an objective, be psychological and then just rely on the work and let it go when it comes to performance. I realised that if I have truly done the work it can’t leave me, so I learned to trust it and stop questioning it in performance. This allowed me to have an inner life and freedom which is what every actor is striving to find.

Nadine Bernecker. Film credits include: Without a Paddle, One Among Us, My Demon Within

Dee Cannon was truly an inspiration to me. What I was most struck by was her ability to take an actor who was having a difficult time with a role, pinpoint exactly what the problem was, and address it through an acting exercise.

It was amazing to see how the acting exercise would instantly help the actor. She is also so clear as a director that, as an actor, you know where exactly to go with a role. She insists on every aspect of truth… from the actual props, be it real food, correct costumes and actually living the character.

Dee’s clarity as a director made me feel very secure with what I was doing… and still she gave me enough artistic space to create and explore.

Menchu Lauchengco-Yulo. Leads in musicals include Into the Woods, The Sound of Music, Les Miserables, Evita, West Side Story and A Chorus Line

When I first sat down with Dee, I didn’t know what to expect. In a sense, I had learned acting from acting opposite many different actors: from doing, not studying. In this way I had picked up a lot of on-camera experience… along with a lot of bad habits.

Dee introduced me to “the work”: the science and psychology of acting, the inners and outers, the art of it. Most importantly, she laid a foundation for me to find “truth” in my performance. Her insight brought my craft to a new level. As a teacher, Dee is as masterful as the method she extols, tuning individually in to each student, to find a way in, to bring out the talent inside.

Michael Clements. Credits include: the lead in the Indy feature La Population 12; featured roles in Michael Bey’s The Island, West Wing and Alias

Dee has been such a mentor to me as a teacher, I hope she would be proud of me. The training I have done with her as a teacher is for me my base as an actor. I think of her a lot and use her methods that I have trained with in all my work as an actor. Of my four years of training at the theatre academy, the weeks with Dee are the ones that affected me the most, and gave me the base I stand on as an actor today!

Sara Sommerfeld, credits include: Swedish feature films: Baba's Cars, Wings of Glass, Tsatsiki Friends Forever. As well as numerous plays at Stockholm Royal Dramatic Theatre, Gothenberg and Malmo.

I had the good fortune to meet Dee Cannon when I was a student at the Swedish National Academy of Acting (4-year programme) in 2003. Having her as a teacher made a very big difference to me and all my fellow students as she gave us very useful tools to dig deeper into the understanding of acting and the importance of being honest when working as an artist.

For a student, there is no way you can “hide” or be “left unseen” when working with Dee. She is responsible for allowing me to gain artistic courage and being able to set foot on the big stages of Sweden after graduating as an actor.

Joakim Grans, Stockholm City Theatre