For every performer who earns millions of dollars, there are thousands who earn below the poverty level. In Actors' Equity Association (the union of stage actors), for example, the median annual earnings for its more than 33,000 members is $5,705.
Screen Actors Guild (SAG) reports, too, that more than 80 percent of its 90,000 members earned less than $5,000. While seven-digit movie deals make headlines for some stars, creating a false impression that all actors are highly paid, according to SAG, the reality is far less glamorous.
The other downsides are the almost constant travel, lack of traditional or "normal" family life, loss of privacy, obsession with appearance and age and, no matter how successful, total insecurity and fear of not getting that next job.
A study, Employment and Earnings of Performing Artists, prepared for the National Endowment for the Arts by a Washington, D.C. consulting group, and containing the most recent figures available, reveals that during the 20-year period covered by the survey, the number of performing artists in the work force grew steadily, while performers' unemployment consistently exceeded the national average. Some good news was that earnings for performers increased during the period, although figures also confirmed the great extent to which actors must supplement their income with outside jobs.
An earlier survey, conducted by the Labor Institute for Human Enrichment funded by the U.S. Department of Labor, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Ford Foundation had similar conclusions: that performing artists' jobs tend to be more intermittent than those of other working people, periods without work are more frequent and longer lasting, and their pay is well below that of other professionals.
That is so much for limousines and tennis courts …and so much for easy.
Playwright Neil Simon (The Odd Couple, Plaza Suite, and The Sunshine Boys) told an audience of actors:
It's hard to be an actor. I know of no greater act of courage than to walk out on an empty stage, seeing the silhouette of four ominous figures sitting in the darkened theatre, with your mouth drying and your fingers trembling, trying to keep the pages in your hand from rattling and trying to focus your eyes on the lines so you don't automatically skip the two most important speeches in the scene, and all the while trying to give a performance worthy of an opening night with only four pages of a play, the rest of which you know nothing about. And then to finally get through it, only to hear from the voice in the darkened theatre, "Thank you..." It has got to be the most painful, frustrating, and fearful experience in the world. Because with it comes a 90 percent chance of rejection. And to do it time after time, year after year, even after you've proven yourself in show after show, requires more than courage and fearlessness. It requires such dedication to your craft and to the work you've chosen for your life, that I'm sure if Equity posted a sign backstage that said, "Any actor auditioning for this show who gets turned down will automatically be shot," you'd still only get about a 12 percent turn away.
What is this career that you've chosen all about? Announce to your family and friends that you want to be an actor, and more likely than not you will be met with anything from downright horror to an indulgent chuckle intended to indicate that, although you may be master of your fate, you are, nonetheless, not completely in command of all your faculties. It's the rare family that accepts the news that one of their members intends to become an actor with the same tranquility that is reserved for an announcement of intentions to become a doctor, a lawyer, or an accountant.
This typical response is a residual symptom of the ancient concept of the actor as a wandering minstrel, a "thing of shreds and patches," who lived by wits and was allergic to "honest" work. This prejudice has been ingrained for a long time now, stemming from the days when there was no organized theatre as such--when entertainers roamed the roads, sharing lodgings and reputations with thieves and other unsavory individuals. Today, we still witness the look or cry of disbelief following the pronouncement that someone wants to be an actor--a response that comes from the almost universal realization that unemployment is the norm, and success difficult to attain.
Historical Background
With the ascendancy of the Puritan influence, many church people were convinced that the theatrical profession encouraged immorality. Maybe they were right. Suppression of theatres was a common thing and often the actor was forced to turn to other pursuits--not all of them socially acceptable--to earn a living.
Since America's founding fathers of the 1600s were of Puritan stock, early theatre in this country had two strikes against it at the outset. In the early days of the colonial settlers, acting was actually illegal in nearly every city. One man was permitted to spend all his money building a theatre in New York and then was forbidden to act in it. Gradually, some of the taboos broke down, and as the people reached out for their cultural stimulation, play going became more common practice. By the end of the eighteenth century, there were functioning theatres in American cities and, although they had been closed during the Revolutionary War, the British, whenever they captured one, would reopen it with their own troupes. President Washington, a theatergoer himself, helped to popularize theatre when the war ended, but not until the middle of the nineteenth century was it considered even remotely "acceptable" to choose acting as a profession.
Even then, actors remained suspect. Unhappily, many of the early idols of the stage themselves provided much of the ammunition for the volleys hurled against them. This was inevitable, for anyone attracted to a profession that was subjected to such social stigma had to be a nonconformist. Then, too, some of the actors may have figured that if they were going to suffer bad reputations anyway, they might as well enjoy themselves while they were at it.
The infamous John Wilkes Booth, an actor and brother of Edwin Booth who was one of the greatest American actors, further blackened the actors' image when he assassinated President Abraham Lincoln. The historic Players Club in New York City has a copy of a letter from Edwin Booth addressed to the people of the United States, expressing deep sorrow for the consequences of his brother's act.
The late nineteenth century and early twentieth saw change. Such stars as Sarah Bernhardt, Sir Henry Irving, Ellen Terry, John Drew, Maude Adams, Richard Mansfield, Lillian Russell, and Edwin Booth had achieved such recognition that acting had come to be considered one of the best rewarded and most glamorous of professions.
Producer Florenz Ziegfeld added new luster with the introduction of a new type of production, the "revue," which he launched with the "Follies of 1907." This was followed annually by similar productions. The stories of Anna Held's "milk baths," which Ziegfeld invented to help publicize his star (and wife), epitomized the flamboyant manner in which theatre then sold itself, and which the public eagerly devoured.
Outside New York, scores of stock and repertory companies flourished throughout the country, selling tickets at prices ranging from twenty-five cents in the balcony to $1.50 for the best orchestra seats. These groups had begun to mushroom around 1885 and continued to thrive, wounded only slightly by early radio and silent, primitive motion pictures. For the most part, these touring companies lived quite compatibly beside the "flat actors" on the movie screens. The Broadway stage was thriving, and vaudeville was also doing well. Times were good--there was enough for everybody. Southern California, with its sunny climate, infrequent rainfall, and varied, picturesque scenery attracted filmmakers in increasing numbers, magnifying and multiplying massively the glittering image of the actor already established by the stage.
Between 1928 and 1930, the roof caved in--not all at once, but it sagged slowly, battered by the double weight of talking pictures and the Wall Street crash. Vaudeville all but vanished, its lighting booths displaced by film projectors. Stock companies folded, and many Broadway theatres were dark. Hollywood's talking picture became the number-one entertainment medium, gobbling up its competition, thriving on opulence and ostentation, dispensing for a few cents the lavish, dazzling fantasy that offered escape from the grim reality of the Great Depression.
With the development of the talking picture, the era of glamour had come to full fruition. Actors and actresses became idols, through the efforts of well-organized and imaginative studio publicity departments. The lengths to which studios sometimes went to maintain the public image of their stars were, by today's standards, quite incredible. There were many instances when great pressure was placed on stars to keep them from marrying, or, if they were married, to hide that fact from their fans. For a movie star to give birth to a baby was sometimes considered treason by a studio.
Happily for actors, this condition did not last. Gradually there developed a tendency to humanize the image of actors, rather than isolate them. Again, the times were changing. When the President of the United States served hot dogs on the White House lawn to the King and Queen of England, Hollywood watched out of the corner of its eye. Humility was becoming chic.
Although the ivory towers of the glamour factories began to crack even prior to World War II, doubtless the war itself had the most to do with a new evolution of the actor. No longer was it fashionable to live lavishly; it was, in fact, unpatriotic. Actors donned uniforms and fought, and some were killed. Stars not in uniform entertained troops, ran stage-door canteens, grew well-publicized "victory gardens," voted in elections, and after the war, even sounded off for or against political candidates.
In short, the community of actors and their employers had come to accept that they were a part of their society, not apart from it. And the society had begun to accept that acting is a profession--an art, perhaps, but not witchcraft.
Television, of course, brings the actor right into every American living room. An actor in a continuing series creates a role, becomes identified with it, and thereby becomes an instant celebrity. The actor is her or his "character," and then as a personality, the actor becomes the subject of scores of interviews on another phenomenon-the talk show. In short, where once only fan magazines churned out monthly "inside" stories about the stars, now favorite TV heroes and heroines may be seen touring the networks, revealing their most intimate "secrets."
People see a great deal of acting these days: from television and commercials to community and school plays. Broadway shows and revues have become familiar fare to almost everyone you know, especially if you live in or near a large city. When your mother can tell you how three soap opera stars' acting styles have changed over the last ten years, or that Disney is producing a musical on Broadway, then you know everyone is interested in acting and it has become a "legitimate" profession.
