News Comment

As an actor of 20 years experience, a producer and a long-standing member of a co-operative actors’ agency, I was worried by the advice given in Need To Know (AP219) to a jaded administrator with a (postponed) burning desire to act. The relentlessly upbeat encouragement given by Acting School North to join the profession after the age of 30 was, at the least, unrealistic. An expert from the heart of the profession, such as a casting director, agent, director or producer – people who employ, rather than train, actors – would certainly have pointed out some very hard facts indeed.
Take a short trawl of the website for Spotlight: the actors’ directory reveals 9,538 actresses and 8,301 actors with the “playing age” of 30–35. Of these, the large majority will be trained with an acting CV going back about ten years; they will have made contacts, gained a reputation as a company member, and have an agent. They will have special skills, trained speaking/singing voices, and camera experience. They will have built up knowledge of the profession and how to behave in it. A lot of them will have been playing the sons and daughters of much more famous actors since their early 20s, with all the associated directorial connections. Theatre and TV makers are employers working on tight budgets and deadlines and they need the right people for the job.
The idea that “life experience and emotional maturity” means that “the older the actor takes up acting the better” is simply not borne out by experience. I make myself very unpopular with middle class parents by telling their acting-mad children not to go to university, but to drama school: you can go to university at any age but you are only 21 once. This is especially true for female actors: unless you are luminously lovely, from an under-represented ethnic minority, or quite fat, your chances are small after your mid-20s, regardless of talent. Parents often look at me as if, in revealing this trend, I think the sexism is OK. I don’t, but I’d be irresponsible not to say it.
In auditions and interviews I see a number of ‘late starters’ whose new careers stagger from unpaid fringe to low-paid films to corporate work and back, with the occasional ad thrown in if they are an unusual ‘type’. Yes, you may get to play Lady Macbeth, but you’ll never get paid for it, and in the meantime you’ve spent thousands of pounds getting there.
I understand that many people working as arts administrators are artistes manqués – you’re going to love the art you chose to work in. There will always be a very few successful exceptions. But if you are an averagely attractive middle-class person over 30, and especially if you are female, I’m afraid the harsh fact, but the kindest advice, is that you have missed the (fickle, chancy, heart-breaking, poverty-stricken) boat. Your best chance of succeeding in acting is, and always has been, starting young.