Answers from The Working Actor

1 Starting Out

Going into acting as a career means entering a profession in which supply will always outweigh demand—by an enormous ratio—and in which unemployment and unpredictability will, in all likelihood, be constant norms.

All that uncertainty leaves many nascent professionals in a fog as they ponder the question of how to begin. Most professions have some sort of acknowledged entry procedure—steps one can take towards becoming employed in that field. There’s no such norm in acting. Careers begin in any number of ways, and no method is proven to work consistently. Getting your foot in the door and actually launching a career is a process that is mysterious at best, impossible at worst.

Here is one very encouraging fact: All the most famous ...