What nobody clutching their Oscar this weekend will tell you

THE Academy Awards ceremony usually follows a similar script. On Mar 15, actresses in gowns flashier than the paparazzis’ bulbs will parade down the red carpet. There will be punchy jokes at the guests’ expense from the host, Conan O’Brien (which will hopefully not provoke actual blows again). And then there will be the tear-laced acceptance speeches.

Over the decades, hundreds of actors have stood onstage clutching the famous gold statuette and reflected on how they got there, despite the odds. Her dream “came true”, Anne Hathaway said. Lupita Nyong’o mused, “No matter where you’re from, your dreams are valid.”

Young, ambitious actors will no doubt appreciate words of encouragement. But for all the talk of dreams, many actors are finding show business a nightmare. Technological change, the rise of streaming and a contraction in productions are taking the shine off the silver screen.

At any given time, around 90 per cent of film and television actors are unemployed, and just a tiny fraction can make a living from acting alone. But there is reason to think it is getting even harder.

“This is the most difficult time ever to be an actor,” says Rodd Cyrus, who graduated from Juilliard, a top arts school, in 2023. He has an envy-inducing CV: theatre credits, a Netflix film and a role in Ragtime, this season’s most acclaimed revival in New York. Why does someone who has landed on his feet feel the acting economy is upside down?

America’s Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts the total number of acting jobs will be flat until 2034. That is a rosier forecast than many in the industry think is likely. In Los Angeles County, the film business workforce fell by almost a third between 2022 and 2024, as shooting moved elsewhere.

From 2002 to 2024, the number of film tickets sold annually in America and Canada declined by more than 50 per cent. From 2022 to 2024, the number of television shows produced, including streaming, fell by almost a third, and the number of film and TV productions by more than 17 per cent.

Theatres hosting plays and musicals, which serve as launch-pads to screen careers, are also struggling. From 2019 to 2024, attendance in America fell by 37 per cent.

Studios already use technology to turn dozens into thousands: 20 actors were used to create a stadium crowd of 26,000 people in Ted Lasso, a popular show. They can also reanimate actors who have died (it is said that Val Kilmer will feature in the forthcoming Canyon of the Dead).

Background actors, otherwise known as “extras” – who fill out crowds in film scenes but have no lines, and can earn around US$200 for an eight-hour workday – rightly worry that studios will replace them with artificial intelligence. That would save money not just on actors, but also on the crew required to corral and manage them.

Already, cast sizes are smaller than they used to be. The Economist analysed nearly 40,000 films in The Movie Database released between 1980 and 2025. The median cast size of films was around 25 actors in the 1980s and 1990s. Starting in around 2000, that figure began to fall. In 2025, the median cast featured 18 actors – a 28 per cent drop.

Defining how AI can be used in film-making has featured in negotiations between studios and SAG-Aftra, a union representing 160,000 performers. Having gone on strike for almost four months in 2023, the union is now reportedly asking studios to pay the guild royalties for using “synthetic” actors. This has been dubbed a “Tilly tax” (after Tilly Norwood, known as the world’s first AI-generated actress).

The rise of streaming has changed how lucrative acting can be. Traditionally actors are paid an upfront fee and residuals (if a TV show airs again).

For traditional TV, residuals can be lucrative. The cast of Friends, for instance, still make millions each year thanks to reruns, even though the show stopped filming 22 years ago.

But streaming residuals are more complex and opaque – most services closely guard viewership numbers – and are likely to be another sticking point in union contract negotiations. One actor whose career spans the network and streaming era grouses: “I’ve done good parts on Netflix shows. After that initial payment, the residuals just aren’t that much.”

One bright, if less lucrative, opportunity has arrived with a new format. Verticals, soap operas for the smartphone generation, have taken off on Instagram and services such as ReelShort and DramaBox.

These are low-budget dramas with episodes that last between one and three minutes. They started in China during the pandemic, when film and TV production shut down, and are now popular in the West, too. In 2024, they generated US$819 million in revenue in America (mostly from subscriptions and ads); by 2030, according to Media Partners Asia, a consulting firm, that number is expected to rise to US$3.8 billion.

Budgets are low, usually around US$150,000 for a 60-90 episode series, and production is quick: shoots usually last seven to 10 days, with two weeks each of pre and post-production, according to Justin Saucedo of Lunar Ticks, a vertical-production studio.

And the days are gruelling: Ashley Michelle Grant, who has been acting in verticals since 2023, shoots between 12 and 20 scenes per 12-hour day. Still, “It’s been a wonderful way to act and still make a living,” she says. Actors tend to fetch US$300 to US$2,000 per day.

To succeed, performers must hustle in new, time-consuming ways. The shift away from in-person auditions to taped ones began during the pandemic but has not abated. This means actors no longer have to live in New York, London or Los Angeles, which is good news.

But actor-preneurship takes time and a lot of mental energy. Andrew Dolan, an actor, estimates he spends 40 to 60 per cent of his time “producing auditions”. This involves setting up sound and lighting, recording only when his kids are at school, editing the audition and sending it off. Pre-pandemic, he used to “get a script from my agent, focus on it, show up at 3.45 pm and just do the work” of acting.

To be cast, actors are also expected to have a social media following. Sarah Bay-Cheng, a professor at the University of Toronto, says casting directors often ask about actors’ follower counts: “Have they brought their own audience? The risk is so great…that you want to know there’s a dedicated audience before you sink money in.”

Posting behind-the-scenes videos to Instagram or TikTok can raise an actor’s profile and lead to more work, so even when they land a gig, they have to document their experience performing.

This preference for known quantities works out well only for known quantities. Last year on Broadway, George Clooney starred in Good Night, and Good Luck, a play he co-wrote based on a film he directed.

Ticket prices exceeded US$800; the play set a weekly gross receipts record of US$4.2 million; and the programme noted that Clooney had “never appeared on Broadway so…buckle up”.

Clooney received an estimated US$6 million for his work on the play. To earn that much would take an average actor 257,180 hours (or 124 years of 40-hour working weeks without holidays).

In acting, as elsewhere, the elites are accruing ever more riches, and the rest face uncertain prospects. No one will mention it in their Oscars speeches, but there is a new rule in acting: there are no small parts, only small actors and what feels like ever smaller odds of making a living.

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