I love acting/improv and would love to get into theater, my question is, what is the pay?
Answer Hi Brad, Sorry for the delay in getting back to you. I know that the popular myth is that actors get paid phenomenal amounts and that acting is an exciting, glamorous and The fact is that of the tens of thousands of professional actors who actively pursue their careers and list their profession as “actor”, most of them DON’T actually make a living on theatre. According to union statistics (both film – SAG – and theatre – AEA), fewer than 2% of all professional (union) actors make a living by acting alone (and the ones that do are mostly those who do film, tv and commercial work as well as theatre, since those tend to pay more). The mean annual salary for actors (film and theatre) ranges from $5000-7000 – well under the poverty level! And that includes that tiny handful of “stars” who make the big bucks, so you can imagine how many actors are making nothing at all by acting. It is very difficult to give you a salary range for acting in theatre (I’m not an expert of film and can’t
