Questions to Ask an Actor
Questions for talking with a working actor about what an acting career is like as a job, not the glamour: auditions, agents, income between jobs, training, typecasting, and what keeps them in it. The second group is about the craft itself, from the first week with a new script and learning lines to what happens when a scene goes wrong, and the last holds questions to ask former actors about leaving and what came next. Useful if you know one, are related to one, are hosting a talkback, or are thinking of becoming one.
Want questions from the whole vault instead? Try the random question generator.
The questions
Each question, and why to ask it
Acting career
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.
The craft
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.
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 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 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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
Former actors
What do you do now, and how much of acting came with you?
Why ask it
Start with the present, because a former actor is asked about the old credits all the time. Teaching, sales, law and directing all borrow from the training, and many have a ready list from making that case to an employer.
When did you know you were done with acting?
Why ask it
Some can name the day. For others it was a run of auditions they stopped chasing, and the difference tells you whether they left the work or the work left them.
What was your last job, and did you know at the time it was the last?
Why ask it
A planned farewell is rare. More often a small part or a short tour turns out, looking back, to have been the end, and how they tell that story shows how settled they are with it.
How did the people around you react when you stopped?
Why ask it
Relief from a parent, disappointment from a friend who liked knowing an actor, an agent who simply stopped calling. The reactions can sting more than the decision did.
How did you explain the acting years to your first employer afterwards?
Why ask it
Worth asking if you are weighing the same move. You hear how they turned a patchy list of credits and day jobs into something a hiring manager could follow, and which parts they left off.
What do you miss most about it?
Why ask it
Seldom the applause. Listen for a rehearsal room, the closeness of a cast, or the moment a scene lands, since that is what the job was really giving them.
What were you relieved to leave behind?
Why ask it
Self-tapes at midnight, waiting on a phone call, being judged on appearance. Framing it as relief lets them be glad they left without having to sound bitter about the business.
Do you still perform anywhere, paid or not?
Why ask it
Community theater, a reading with old friends, a voice job now and then. Plenty of people stopped acting for a living without stopping altogether, and they tend to care about that distinction.
How do you watch a play or a film these days?
Why ask it
One answer is that the technical eye never switches off: they see the missed mark and the cut that saved a scene. The other is that leaving gave back the plain pleasure of sitting in an audience.
Are you still close to anyone you worked with?
Why ask it
Casts become close quickly and scatter when a job ends. The friendships that outlasted the work say more about those years than a list of credits would.
Would you go back if the right part came along?
Why ask it
Ask it lightly, because for some it is a sore spot. A quick no, a long pause and a list of conditions are three different answers, and each deserves a different follow-up.
Looking back, was the acting career worth what it cost you?
Why ask it
Save this for someone you know well. A person who has left can weigh the years, the money and the missed birthdays against the work without a next audition to protect.
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.
With former actors, start with now
Someone who has left the profession still gets introduced by a part they played years ago. Ask about the work they do today first, and the acting years tend to come up on their own terms.
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.