Actor in 534: Thespis steps out of the chorus

This page follows the trade from Thespis, the Sanskrit Natya Shastra and Okuni's riverbed kabuki through the Restoration's first actresses, Garrick's naturalism, the birth of the movie star in 1910 and the Method, to the self-tape era and the 2023 strike over artificial intelligence. It covers how people actually get in, what the craft consists of, who reached the top and how, and which parts of the job machines are already taking.

Do you need a degree or drama school to become an actor? No — acting has no formal license or required qualification anywhere in the world. Many leading actors trained at conservatories like RADA, Juilliard or India's National School of Drama, and many others never trained at all. What a good school actually buys is three years of supervised craft work, a graduation showcase in front of agents, and a professional network — all obtainable, more slowly, by other routes.

The spread is wider than almost any other profession. The US median was $20.50 an hour in 2023, and most union members earn only a few thousand dollars a year from acting, while a handful of stars are reported to make $20 million or more per film. Germany is the exception: its subsidized state theatres pay ensemble actors a salaried minimum of about €3,000 a month.