Daniel Janowski should have been an octopus. Having eight arms, replete with suckers, would come in rather handy as he attempts to keep multiple balls in the air. As a teenage drama student he has to juggle study, auditions, acting roles, working (as a waiter), family and girlfriend commitments. And when at last the final year approaches he will also have to keep himself motivated in spite of the prospect of a long, arduous climb to the top looming ahead of him. And if he’s being a realist, which he can be sometimes, the far-off pinnacle will not be the summit of fame, fortune, caviar and cocaine, but simply the chance to engage in regular work as an actor, as opposed to working behind a bar, chewing his cheek epithelial, waiting for his big break in the form of a benevolent, keen-eyed producer/director/thirsty person who knows talent when he sees it.
Every aspiring actor whose parents were not actors or musicians or engaged in similarly precarious occupations, and even some whose parents were and have begun to lament living too near the bohemian breadline, will be tiresomely familiar with phrases such as ‘Don’t put all your eggs in one basket’, ‘You need to have something to fall back on’, or ‘You can’t do that, find yourself a proper job.’ Checking out the websites of various drama schools, University, FE colleges and non-accredited drama schools around the country, you may think the picture for tomorrow’s thespians doesn’t seem too bad. For example, in response to the question ‘Will I be rich and famous?’ I was slightly bemused to read the following extract on Birmingham School of Acting’s FAQ page:
‘There has always been a concern that pursuing a career as an actor will not lead to employment, or at least not to a ‘proper job’. The truth is that not everyone can be a star and becoming an actor may not guarantee great wealth but many of the School’s graduates are working professionals with long careers.’
I’m not so sure BSA are being entirely straight forward. How many is ‘many’, and is many the same as most, and by how much, and how long is long, and how would you describe career? Obviously BSA’s business is to get wannabe actors applying for their course, no doubt keeping other aspiring actors employed at least broadly within the performance realm. But I would be very interested to see how many drama school graduates are actually ‘working professionals’ earning enough from acting to be able to give up their second or third jobs. I tried but was unable to find any recent survey of trained actors and their current working status.
Most actors I know have it tough. They spend long periods between jobs, often work for free on indie/student films in the vain hope they might do well at festivals, chew their nails a lot and wonder if it’s all worth it, and whether success is not just a cruel mirage. So are tomorrow’s stage and screen hopefuls being misled even by the vague promise of an acting career when the reality is that most trained actors will hardly ever get paid to act at all? And is the contribution a drama school education makes towards a successful acting career any more or less significant than other factors like, say, determination, bloody-mindedness, or having supportive and/or well connected parents?
According to a study carried out by the Institute of Manpower Studies on behalf of the Arts Council of England, 86% of actors working in the profession had received formal vocational training. Drama schools, like any other kind of educational institution, fall into three categories: good, bad and okay. But because acting is so competitive, the only places that could possibly claim to giving you the advantage by attending per se, are those in the first category. And frankly, numbers are limited. Those in the know, know exactly which ones they are, and those who don’t probably won’t be going.
Some are household names like Rada and Guildhall, others are less conspicuous beyond entertainment circles, like East 15 and the Drama Centre. The key thing top schools have in common is that they will almost certainly equip graduating students with equity cards, preventing them from having to experience the ‘no acting job without an Equity card, no Equity card without an acting job’ frustration.
The accuracy or fairness of saying such places are populated by over-privileged wealthy tossers remains the subject of debate, but with the cost of putting yourself through Rada for academic year 2004/5 in excess of £11000 per year in tuition fees, it is clearly beyond the budget of many. There are scholarships of course, just ask Anthony Hopkins, but for most people access into the country’s elite institutions will always remain a long way out of reach. And even if those who have the dosh must overcome the fierce competition for places. As Rada president Lord Attenborough says ‘We get 1,800 applicants a year for just 32 places. That in itself is a sieve.’ But there is no doubt in his mind about the value of the institution of which he himself is an old boy. ‘[If I was a parent] I’d scrape and steal to find the funds to send them,’ he said.
Whilst attending the ‘right’ school would undoubtedly pay dividends for anyone with innate acting ability, it is not a prerequisite for success. Many well known actors have achieved success without going to Rada, just like there are many top scientists who didn’t study physics at Oxford. Patsy Palmer, the former soap star who has successfully transferred to the stage and is currently touring with the Richard Harris comedy ‘Stepping Out’, started her career at a drama school in Islington that was set up for parents who couldn’t afford to send their kids to full-time stage school. Jonathan Creek’s Alan Davies did a drama degree course at the University of Kent at Canterbury, and Bob Hoskins famously said that he was able to learn to act just by watching women react to life’s situations. ‘I never went to acting classes or anything like that. I became an actor pretty much overnight,’ he said.
Every successful actor, no matter where or if they studied their craft, shares a genuine passion and love of acting. If they didn’t they would be neither convincing nor any good, and if they were not good their time doing paid gigs would be extremely limited. I am supposing a bit, because there are plenty of actors out there who can make you cringe at the drop of a hat, but through I think it is reasonable to suggest that the good and the bad get separated out, and ugliness hardly comes into it, except during casting, when sadly, it counts more than any of us would like to admit.
The thing about drama school is that, no matter whether the piece of paper they give you at the end has any real weight in landing you a role, attending drama school is a chance to practice your craft, learn from others, and do some performance. No doubt by attending you are proving to yourself and others that you are serious about attaining goals that from the outside seem frighteningly elusive. Having rich and/or celebrity parents would obviously give you a foot in the door, and would probably be enough to keep you in and out of work, but it certainly wouldn’t give you Angelina Jolie’s fame and fortune.
Continual job offers and staying power are the result of hard work which comes from determination and the will to rise above the odds. And the odds will never be stacked in favour of the wannabe actor, or even the wannabe scientist. There will only ever be so many vacancies to go around. And with well over 1000 hungry graduates stepping out of the major UK drama schools and only a limited number of professionally made (and budgeted) feature films being made each year, I guess the question you need to ask yourself is how much do you really love acting and what sacrifices are you prepared to make to be able to do it?
