Is Becoming an Actor Expensive?

Actors, be they emerging, established or even aspiring, tend to carry anxiety around money and finance. It’s not hard to see why, given the job’s famous lack of any security. And it’s particularly true for those on the outside looking in—swayed by images of bohemian artists starving in garrets and actor jokes with the punchline “Do you want fries with that?” Is being an actor expensive? It certainly can be, but that’s not to say has to.

There are several financial considerations to bear in mind when planning or navigating a career as an actor. Beyond the usual start-up costs, actors need to invest in their skills and maintaining their portfolio of headshots and showreels. Most importantly, actors need to ensure the have a comfortable standard of living beyond acting work—as the next paid job is never guaranteed.

In this article, we’re going to skip over the acting career start-up costs. These you can read about in their own dedicated article (linked above) if you’re hoping to give yourself the best kick-off without breaking the bank. Instead, we’ll be looking at the continuing costs of the business: and how to keep them reasonable.

Skills Development

Here’s an important truth to learn and remember: acting training doesn’t stop after drama school. It’s not done when you finish your final showcase, get your degree or even book your first job.

Training is a constant. You need to keep improving yourself: studying, practicing, taking classes, attending workshops, or sending your work for feedback right here as part of our Scene Club. When actors don’t work at their craft, they tend to fall behind or get sloppy with technique. When they suddenly need to be ready for a self-tape or an audition, the skills are never at the required level.

You can spend a lot of money on skills development if you like. Some of the more prestigious courses and masterclasses come with hefty price tags, and require time commitments that may lock you out of employment opportunities elsewhere.

But as long as you are training in some way, doing so diligently and with clear focus, you don’t need to spend a fortune to get results. In fact, some of the best things actors can do to improve their craft on the daily are totally free: reading scripts, vocal warm-ups, running a scene study group with peers.

Cost of Doing Business

With skills developed and maintained, we can move on to the costs associated with your career. In this section, we’re going to break down the different aspects of what we call the actor’s toolkit: headshots, showreels/self-tapes, CV and your online presence/marketing.

Headshots

A good headshot is like a firm handshake: it’s the aspect of your toolkit that establishes who you are, what your brand might be and how you present to the industry. When produced by an experienced photographer, they reinforce your status in the industry as a professional—someone to be taken seriously.

Unfortunately, this means you can’t skimp on the associated costs. You need to pay an experienced headshot photographer, not slip your nephew fifty bucks after they complete their weekend photography course. Headshots also need to be regularly updated as your look changes and your body ages.

All that said: there are different tiers of photographers available, and most are kind in their billing to actors (who are not famously wealthy marks.) Find somebody you like, whose style compliments your intended ‘look’, and remember that the most expensive photographer may not suit you.

Showreel/Self-taping

As a modern, professional actor, you will need access to a camera and self-taping set-up. Don’t be disheartened if that read to you as very expensive-sounding sentence. A decent camera phone will do fine, supported by a tripod and a ring-light. If you want to get fancy you can invest in a microphone, although a quiet room will usually do the trick.

This will enable you to produce two very important things: self-tapes for auditions, which is how you secure work; and a showreel, which is how you secure an agent or get the eye of a casting director. After the initial equipment costs, all of your showreels and self-tapes are free to produce.

While we’re on the subject: don’t ever pay a company or school for a showreel of ‘fake’ film scenes. You might wish to employ somebody to shoot a high-quality, well-lit showreel, but keep it focused static on you.

Simply-shot, bare-bones, blank-wall-with-ample-light self-tapes make for the best promotional materials these days. Anybody telling you different is trying to sell you something—usually a short, overwrought clip that never quite looks like the real thing.

CV

Here’s a bit of good news: your CV is free! No need to pay somebody to format this all pretty; find a format online that works for you and ensure that it’s streamlined and easy to read. Keep everything on one page and lead with your credits. Everything else (skills, training, etc.) goes on the bottom.

Marketing

Finally, we come to your online presence. This covers your social media (all free, don’t ever pay for a blue tick) and your online casting profiles on websites such as Casting Networks and StarNow.

These websites tend to support themselves with opt-in subscriptions. We won’t tell you to pay for these as a necessity, but you might like to see what life is like in the premium lane if you’re so inclined. But our general advice with these is to consider them as supplementary to the usual grind of finding an agent/booking work independently by reaching out. Don’t ever rely on these as your sole place to be discovered for work.

Cost of Living

So: you’re a gigging actor with an up-to-date toolkit and a regular coaching session. You’ve read through this much of this very article, so you’re making smart financial decisions around your career and skills development.

The only thing left now is to live as well as you can. Seriously. That’s it!

This might sound like the most obvious advice in the world to receive, but it’s something that many arts practitioners wilfully ignore. They have been conditioned to treat certain basic human needs as luxuries, secondary comforts to their pursuit of their career and craft. We’re talking about weekends, hobbies, good nutrition, physical and mental health.

Pursuit of an acting career might come with extra costs. But never cut corners that will deny you a pleasant, safe and sustainable existence. Go back to the budgetary drawing board and try again.

There are no points for artists who suffer the most. Because their work inevitably suffers as well.

Savings, or The Money Runway

One last point before we wrap things up. Let’s talk about the importance of savings.

A modest, rainy-day fund is a must-have for any actor. It’s a safeguard against career dry-spells, or the lean times between day jobs. I remember a friend of mine being told in drama school that you should never do a job you can’t walk out on immediately when the Big Opportunity knocks. (I’m actually unsure of how much I agree with that, but I take the point nonetheless.)

However, savings are also useful when you choose to be un- or underemployed for the sake of your acting career. If you land an excellent role in a piece of indie theatre, or are cast in a short film that shoots over your usual weekend shift, you might need to forgo your expected income.

Think of it as the ‘money runway’. It’s a safeguard, provided that you know how long you have until it all runs out. And with a little planning and budgeting, you should be perfectly fine.

Conclusion

So, after all that, let’s ask the question again: is becoming an actor expensive?

Not really, but it does come with costs. If you know what those costs are—if you plan for them and you plan for the very worst case scenario—then you’re unlikely to be surprised and burned.

Remember that acting is a marathon, never a sprint. Don’t just feel secure about the next week, get the month/year/five year plan squared away. Then the only focus you’ll have from there is your art.

Oh, and one last thing: get yourself a top-gun arts accountant. Find yourself a bloodhound for deductions and claim everything from equipment to theatre tickets to a portion of your Netflix subscription. Scroung ’em now and thank us later…

Good luck!