Questions to Ask an Actor
Questions for talking with a working actor about the job rather than the glamour: auditions, agents, income between jobs, training, typecasting, and what keeps them in it. Useful if you know one, are related to one, or are thinking of becoming one.
The questions
Open any question for the note
What are you working on at the moment?
Why ask it
The one opener actors are always ready for. It also avoids the awkwardness of asking what they have been in, which puts them in the position of proving themselves.
How did you get into it in the first place?
Why ask it
Routes vary: a school production, drama school, a background job that turned into lines. The route usually explains which parts of the industry they know from the inside.
What do you do between jobs?
Why ask it
Most working actors have other income, and asking directly saves them from having to raise it. The answer is where the real shape of the career lives.
How many auditions do you go up for in a typical month?
Why ask it
The ratio of auditions to bookings is the thing outsiders find hardest to believe. It reframes rejection as arithmetic rather than as a verdict on someone.
What does a self-tape actually involve at your end?
Why ask it
Expect a story about lighting, a phone on a tripod, and someone reading the other part badly in a kitchen. Casting has shifted the cost of auditioning onto the actor, and this is where you see it.
How did you find your agent, and what do they actually do for you?
Why ask it
Answers range from real advocacy to little more than a mailbox. If you are considering this career, this is the most practically useful question here.
How do you decide whether to take a job you are not excited about?
Why ask it
Puts money, rent and craft in the same question, which is where actors actually live. Listen for the rule they have made for themselves and how often they break it.
What is the most useful training you have paid for?
Why ask it
There is a large industry selling classes to actors. Someone with a few years in can usually tell you which spending held its value and which was hope.
How uneven is the money, month to month?
Why ask it
Asking about the pattern rather than the amount keeps it comfortable. What you learn is how much of the job is cashflow management rather than performance.
What did your family make of it when you started?
Why ask it
This is often the story underneath the career. It also tends to be the part they have never been asked about, since interviews stay on the work.
What is the least glamorous day you have had on a job?
Why ask it
Waiting in a field, twelve hours for four lines, a costume that did not fit. These stories are told well and they correct the picture most people have of the work.
Do the nerves still turn up, and what do you do with them?
Why ask it
Almost everyone says yes, which is worth hearing if you are new. The interesting half is the routine they have built to work while they are nervous.
What does stage ask of you that camera work does not?
Why ask it
Actors who do both are precise about this: sustaining, projecting, the absence of a second take. It gets you craft detail without asking them to theorize.
Who do you go to when you cannot crack a part?
Why ask it
A coach, a friend in the cast, a director they trust, or nobody. The answer shows how solitary the work is for them and how much support they have built.
What kind of role do you keep getting sent, and how do you feel about it?
Why ask it
Typecasting is usually shaped by age, accent and appearance, none of which they chose. Asking how they feel about it is more useful than asking whether it happens.
What is the hardest part of the uncertainty?
Why ask it
Answers tend to be practical, not romantic: not being able to book a holiday, declining a wedding, never knowing about next month. That specificity is the point.
What kept you going through a bad year?
Why ask it
Ask about a bad year rather than about motivation in general, and you get something real: a teacher, a small job, a friend, or stubbornness.
What work are you proud of that almost nobody saw?
Why ask it
Small theater, a short film, a fringe run. It moves the conversation off credits and onto what they think their best work actually is.
Is there anything that would make you stop?
Why ask it
A serious question that deserves a late slot. Many have a line about age, money or family, and some have already moved it more than once.
What do people say when you tell them what you do that you wish they would not?
Why ask it
You get the list of clumsy remarks, probably including one you were about to make, and it ends the conversation with them in charge of it.
Talking to an Actor About the Work
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
How to Ask
Ask about the job, not the fame
Scheduling, income, auditions and training are the actual content of an acting career. Questions about celebrity treat the work as a hobby with a lottery ticket attached.
Let them set the level of detail on money
Asking how uneven the income is gets an honest answer. Asking what they earned last year usually ends the subject.
If you want advice, say so
Actors will be generous with someone considering the career, but only if the ask is clear. Requesting an introduction to their agent in the same breath is not.
What Not to Say
Would I have seen you in anything?
It asks them to justify their career in one sentence. Ask what they are working on now, or what they are proudest of, instead.
Do something for us
Requests to perform on the spot, do a voice, or read a line are the most common complaint actors have about social situations.
Have you thought about a backup plan?
They have thought about it more than you have. If you are genuinely curious about the finances, ask how the year is structured instead.
Name-dropping as an opener
Asking what a famous colleague is really like puts them in an awkward position immediately. Save it, or skip it.
If You Are Considering the Career Yourself
- Ask what they would spend money on now if they were starting over, and what they would not.
- Ask how they got their first paid job, in detail, including who introduced them.
- Ask what a normal week looks like when they are not shooting, hour by hour.
- Ask what they wish they had understood about agents before signing with one.
- Ask which city or market they would start in today and why.