Good Questions to Ask Actors
Questions to ask an actor, whether you are running an interview, hosting a talkback or just curious. They cover how a role gets built, learning lines, nerves before a show, working to camera against working to a room, and what auditions and the gaps between jobs are really like.
The questions
Open any question for the note
What are you working on at the moment, and where are you in it?
Why ask it
The stage matters: an actor in the second week of rehearsal talks about problems, one in a long run talks about maintenance, one between jobs talks about the industry. It also stops you asking rehearsal questions about a job that finished in spring.
What do you actually do in the first week with a new script?
Why ask it
You get method rather than mystique: reading it through as an audience member, marking every fact the text states about the character, working out what happens between scenes. The specifics differ enormously between actors.
How do you learn lines?
Why ask it
Everyone assumes memorisation is the hard part and actors will tell you it is the easy part, usually while describing something concrete: running lines with someone reading in, learning cues rather than speeches, walking the moves at the same time.
What is the most useful note a director has given you?
Why ask it
Notes are small and technical, which is why the answer tends to be genuinely revealing: slow down, stop deciding what she thinks before she says it, play it to win. Ask what the note fixed.
How does a performance change between the first night and the fortieth?
Why ask it
Long runs are where craft becomes visible: what they let go of, what tightens, what they have to actively resist doing because it got a laugh once. Screen actors will tell you the opposite problem, which is playing a scene once and living with it.
What is different about acting to a camera and acting to a room?
Why ask it
Ask for the practical difference rather than the philosophical one: scale, having to hit a mark, playing to someone standing in the wrong place, doing the emotional peak at nine in the morning on take fourteen.
What do you do when you do not like the character you are playing?
Why ask it
The useful answers involve finding what the character believes they are doing rather than defending them. Anyone who says they love all their characters is likelier to be avoiding the question than to be unusually generous.
How do you handle nerves before you go on?
Why ask it
Expect a physical routine rather than a mental one, and expect some of it to sound strange. Ask whether the nerves have got better or worse with experience, because the answer is often worse.
What happens when something goes wrong mid-scene?
Why ask it
Every actor has a story about a missed entrance, a dead prop or a line that vanished, and the story tells you how the company covers for each other. It is also the most entertaining answer you will get.
How do you play a scene with someone you have no chemistry with?
Why ask it
This is a technical problem actors solve regularly and rarely get asked about. Watch for whether they talk about doing something to the other actor rather than feeling something at them.
What does an audition day look like from your side?
Why ask it
Cuts through the version audiences imagine: self-tapes recorded at home, sides received the night before, decisions made on things entirely outside your control. Useful for anyone considering the career.
How do you decide whether to take a job you are not excited about?
Why ask it
Honest answers involve rent, contacts, and whether the director is someone worth working for. Actors who talk only about artistic fit are describing a position most working actors cannot afford.
What do you do between jobs?
Why ask it
The gaps are most of the career for most actors, and the answer covers other paid work, classes, self-tapes and the difficulty of staying ready. It is the part of the profession that never gets dramatised.
How do you leave a heavy part behind at the end of the day?
Why ask it
Look for a routine rather than a claim that it does not affect them: the walk home, taking the costume off in a particular order, a rule about not discussing it in the car. Vague answers about being professional often precede an admission that a role did follow them home.
Have you taken a part you regret?
Why ask it
Rarely asked directly and often answered with more candour than expected, whether about the material, the company or the terms. Give them room to decline it and do not push.
Who taught you something about the craft that you still use?
Why ask it
Points at a specific transferable technique and a lineage: a teacher, a stage manager, an older actor in a first job. Ask them to describe the actual thing rather than the person.
What is the difference between a scene that is technically right and one that is alive?
Why ask it
A craft question that experienced actors enjoy, because it is the whole problem of the job. Expect answers about listening, about not knowing what happens next, about leaving something undecided until the moment.
What do you wish audiences understood about how this work gets made?
Why ask it
Usually produces something structural: how little rehearsal there is, how much is decided in editing, how many people are in the room. It reframes what the audience thought they were watching.
What has changed about the work since you started?
Why ask it
Gets at the trade rather than the art: self-taping, streaming contracts, shorter rehearsal periods, doing your own publicity. Actors with a decade behind them tend to have strong views here.
What would you tell someone about to start training?
Why ask it
Worth saving for last so that it is shaped by everything already said. Ask what they would tell that person not to spend money on, which often gets the more useful half of the answer.
Interviews, talkbacks and stage doors
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
Before you ask anything
- See or watch the work. An actor can tell in one question whether you have, and the whole exchange changes once they know you have.
- Get the vocabulary right for the medium. Rehearsal, previews and press night belong to theatre; blocking, coverage and pickups belong to screen. Mixing them signals you are asking from a template.
- Look up two other interviews so you can avoid the questions they have answered repeatedly, particularly anything about how they remember all those lines.
- Pick one area. Craft, career or this particular production. Trying to do all three in fifteen minutes produces short answers on each.
Match the question to the setting
- At a stage door, right after a show: one short question, and expect an exhausted person. Ask about the production rather than their career.
- In a talkback with an audience: keep it to a single question, no preamble, and let others in. Multi-part questions eat the time of two other people.
- In a recorded interview: ask the open craft questions early while they are fresh, and leave anything sensitive until you have some rapport.
- In a classroom or workshop setting: ask for the practical exercise rather than the principle. Actors are usually happy to demonstrate something small.
What not to ask
- Questions about a co-star's private life, or about anything a tabloid has covered. It ends the conversation and it is not yours to ask.
- Treating the character as the person, particularly with anyone who has played someone unpleasant.
- "When is your big break coming?" or anything that measures their career against fame rather than work.
- Asking a working actor to look at your reel or read your script.
- Plot questions you could answer by watching the thing, which tells them you did not.
Follow-ups that get real answers
The strongest follow-up in any conversation with an actor is "can you show me what you mean?" A great deal of acting technique is physical and gets described badly in the abstract. The second strongest is asking about a specific moment: name the scene, name the line, and ask what they were doing there. Generalities about process produce the answer they give everyone; a named moment produces something they have to think about. If an answer sounds rehearsed, ask what was different in rehearsal from what ended up in front of an audience.