Questions to Ask an Actress

The questions

Open any question to see why it works.

1. 1

   What are you working on at the moment?

   The obligatory opener, and worth getting out of the way early so the rest of the conversation is not shadowed by it. Listen to how she describes the project rather than what it is, because an actor who is enjoying something talks about the people, and one who is not talks about the schedule.

2. 2

   What was the first job you were paid for?

   Almost every actor has an unglamorous first credit involving a regional advert, a corporate video, or two lines in a soap, and they tend to be fond of it. It is a better route into an origin story than asking when she knew she wanted to act, which produces the same rehearsed anecdote every time.

3. 3

   What does a shooting day actually look like from the moment you arrive?

   This is the question audiences most want answered and interviewers most often skip. The answer usually involves a very early call, an enormous amount of waiting, and the fact that a few minutes of screen time can take a full day, which reframes everything else she says about stamina.

4. 4

   How did the audition for this one go?

   Casting has moved largely to self-taped auditions filmed at home, and actors have strong feelings about performing to a phone propped on a shelf with a friend reading the other part. You will often get the detail that she was originally seen for a different role, which is more revealing than any question about preparation.

5. 5

   How do you learn lines?

   The methods are specific and vary wildly: recording the other parts and playing them back, walking while reciting, learning the moves and letting the words attach to them. Actors enjoy this question because it is craft rather than personality, and the answer usually leads straight into how they think about a scene.

6. 6

   Which of your roles do people bring up most, and is it the one you would choose?

   Almost no actor's favorite work is their best known work, and the gap between the two is the honest heart of most careers. Asking both halves at once gives her permission to be generous about the famous one while telling you which piece she is actually proud of.

7. 7

   What did you have to learn for a part that you have never used since?

   Six weeks of horse riding, a dialect, sign language, how to hold a scalpel. These are the concrete stories actors rarely get asked for, and they demonstrate how much unseen preparation sits behind a few minutes of finished film.

8. 8

   Do you watch your own work?

   The split is genuine and about even, and both answers are interesting: the ones who watch describe using it to correct habits, and the ones who refuse describe not being able to see the performance for the self-criticism. Follow up by asking whether she watched this one.

9. 9

   What does a good director actually do for you?

   You will get something more specific than collaboration, usually about trust, about being given one clear adjustment rather than five, or about being protected from the pressure of the schedule. It also tends to surface, without naming anyone, what a bad director does.

10. 10

    How do you build something with an actor you met that morning?

    Screen work is shot out of order with people who are strangers, and love scenes, family scenes and decades of history are often manufactured in an afternoon. The answer is usually practical and slightly unromantic, which is exactly what makes it worth hearing.

11. 11

    How much of the performance is decided in the edit?

    Actors know that a take they hated can be the one used, and that a whole performance can be reshaped by cutting. Asking this acknowledges that she does not control the final result, which is a real feature of the job and something interviewers seldom mention out loud.

12. 12

    What does theatre give you that camera work does not, and the other way around?

    Ask this only if she has done both, and expect a clear answer, because the two are physically different jobs. Stage actors talk about the continuous arc and the audience; screen actors talk about scale and the ability to do it again. The comparison usually reveals where she feels most at home.

13. 13

    How do you decide to turn something down?

    Saying no involves money, timing, and how much work is on the table, and few actors are in a position to be purely principled about it. An honest answer here says more about the reality of an acting career than any question about ambition.

14. 14

    What do you do between jobs?

    The gaps are the job. Answers cover other work, auditioning constantly, teaching, writing, and how long a gap has to get before it stops feeling like a break and starts feeling like an ending. It is also the part aspiring actors most need to hear described plainly.

15. 15

    Is there a part you did not get that you still think about?

    Actors are used to being asked about their successes and rarely offered a graceful way to talk about the near misses. Most have one, and the story of what happened afterwards, who got it and what it did for them, is usually told without bitterness and with a lot of insight.

16. 16

    How do you leave a character behind at the end of a job?

    Some actors treat this as a myth and some describe a real hangover after months in a difficult role. Either answer is honest and both cut against the interview cliche, particularly if she pushes back on the premise, which is itself a good moment.

17. 17

    What do people get wrong about the job?

    Wide enough that she can take it wherever the current irritation lies: the money, the glamour, the assumption that visibility equals security, the belief that the work is mostly performing rather than mostly waiting and looking for the next thing.

18. 18

    What has changed about the way this work is made since you started?

    Better than asking about the industry in the abstract, because it invites specifics she has personally lived through: self-tapes, streaming release patterns, shorter schedules, intimacy coordinators. Let her name the change rather than proposing one for her.

19. 19

    What advice did you get early on that you only understood much later?

    Sharper than asking for advice directly, which produces platitudes. The delayed comprehension framing forces a real memory, and the answer tends to be something small and practical she was told by someone whose name she still remembers.

20. 20

    What kind of part would you like that nobody has offered you?

    A closing question that looks forward instead of backward, and one actors are rarely asked because interviewers focus on the release being promoted. Answers are often specific about genre, register or scale, and it is the quote that tends to get picked up afterwards.