Is Acting a Career?

Do you have a glorified hobby?

Unfortunately, most actors treat their work as a hobby. They may be deeply invested, like a-basement-worth-of-model-trains invested, but are ultimately still never taking the next step to making their work an actual career. 

A hobby could be something you’d love to make a living doing but don’t immediately see how it’s really possible. Therefore, you do not think through how you will take that passion, that dream, and make a sustainable living doing it.

It would be nice if somehow things could work out and you could do that hobby full time, but it’s not something you’ll work at to make happen.

That’s not a career. That’s a hobby.

Let me be clear, an artistic career doesn’t necessarily equal consistent money, rather it's your overall approach based on the idea of sustainability. Are you actively working towards building a business built on more than just passion and luck?

A good way to get a sense as to whether or not you’re managing a career or a hobby is to stand it up against some basic business practices that we should all be engaged in if we are, in fact, running a business. A career as an actor consists of at least 75% of the following:

• Clear goals and a timeline for accomplishing them

• Solid secondary income stream

• Overall financial oversight

• Active, diverse marketing

• Ongoing varied self produced work

• Consistently cultivating and expanding a network

• Strategies for improving your craft and your business

• A system for navigating the rough terrain that is our industry and getting your work done

How many of these facets are currently part of your creative business model?

So, is acting a career?

Oftentimes, when I tell civilians I am an actor they normally say the following: “It’s so wonderful you are pursuing your dreams.” I appreciate the words of encouragement and am grateful to be in the game, but something about the sentiment doesn’t sit right.

Acting is firstly my career, it also happens to be my dream. However, a dream isn’t something you necessarily work for, it’s something you hope happens.

When we accept that this is a career, we must treat it as such. That includes building infrastructure around our time management, making real sacrifices as we actively grow a strong business, accepting responsibility for our work and showing up to do it whether we feel like it or not.

The art of acting itself is something we of course love and can spend copious amounts of time and energy doing; and there are some blessed individuals in this world who only have to focus on that. However, to make this a real career, most of us will have to expand our idea of what the actual work is beyond the audition room, film set or stage.