Act your age

It’s a funny age, 37. Especially these days. Serums, lotions and potions have made it that on a good day, in the right light, when fully hydrated and after an uninterrupted eight hours of sleep in a cool room one can easily pass for 32.

And on a really good day, in a dimly lit cocktail bar, I’ve personally been mistaken for 30. It doesn’t get any better than that.

But regardless of how much you spend or how hard you work to dial back the years around your eyes – you’re still the age you are.

And with that comes a set of societal expectations. Your twenties are broadly regarded as a time to play, to make mistakes, to find yourself. To work things out a bit.

No one (unless your dad’s a Jacob Rees-Mogg type) is going to say to a twenty-something that they should have a proper job, a dwindling sex life and be six-figures in debt to the bank which they pay off over thirty years in return for some bricks.

Obviously, some people in their twenties smash it and do have all those things in place early on. Fair play. If you’ve done it all by twenty-four then you can always explore dogging or owning an exotic pet or something. Keep things fresh.

But I’m here to talk about actors and/or writer/performers (like me). And most actors haven’t made it in their twenties.

And when you’re six years into your thirties and you haven’t – but continue to tell people you still have your hand in – then a look that once was one of sincere encouragement now resembles a sympathetic (at best) wince of condescension.

“Really? That’s unusual!”

Yes really. I am. Back off.

So sit back, grab your favourite electrostimulation device (to abate those lines and wrinkles) as we delve into my journey to be worthy as an actor in their thirties.

WHAT’S THE INDUSTRY SAYING?

The industry is split into two factions, and rarely do the two intertwine. There are those who are actors who work and earn a living from it and there are those who are actors who don’t earn a living from it.

Occasional overlaps occur, you might bag an ad or a panto through any given year. But usually you’ve netted some additional earnings from a bar job or something to keep the wolves from the door.

Understanding the scale of actors in the ‘not earning a living from it’ camp is difficult. Spotlight is a database all actors (in the UK at least) have to be on. Accessing the data held on that database is tricky as an actor. The website offers tiers depending on your role, so a casting director will see more than an actor for example. But Spotlight says there are at least 65,000 actors on their database.

65,000.

Wilko, the big British high-street store which sadly went into administration this summer, employed around 12,500 people. If Spotlight’s numbers are accurate, there are about five times the number of actors seeking acting work than there were employees of Wilko. That’s a lot of people.

To take a more optimistic view, OnBuy.com published an interesting blog in 2021 with data revealing the optimum age for acting success. And to all my fellow tricenarian’s, great news! Data suggests 27.2% of those aged 30-39 enjoy their so-called career peak in that range. It’s 25% for those 40-49 and just 14% for those in their twenties.

This brings some comfort. For an industry which is seemingly so focused on youth and beauty, it takes a degree of maturity and age to hit the strides of success. OnBuy’s methodology takes data from top live action stars at the worldwide Box Office, birth dates for the actors at the time the film came out, box office performances for those films and then groups the findings together in ten-year age periods. So it is flawed in that it has to draw on data from the most successful actors in the world.

But it’s interesting to see nonetheless and echoes most industries where people tend to find success in their thirties and forties. Before the slow decline into irrelevance as you cease to keep up with modern trends. For me that’ll be AI. I didn’t like AI the first time around, it was too long. One of Spielberg’s weaker efforts IMO.

It also validates my long-standing line of defence: “Ricky Gervais was 40 when The Office came out so there’s time yet!”

This is true, loads of actors can (and do) make it later in life.

But citing the age someone makes it discounts all the years and years of graft (and, in Gervais’s case, a pop career): the fringe shows, the second jobs, the shit ideas, the great ideas and everything in between.

So whilst there’s comfort in thinking your time just hasn’t come yet, most writer/performers are never going produce something as seminal as The Office.

The truth is most actors never make it.

WHAT DOES IT EVEN MEAN TO “MAKE IT”?

If you asked a doe-eyed teenage Daft Lad what success looked like to him in 2003, he would’ve said “having my sketch show on TV!” I’ve always written things to create parts that I could play.

I was never the type to become an actor that sat waiting for the phone to ring (as noble as that is). I always wanted to create my own opportunities. Keep my mind busy. For you, it might’ve been to one day play Hamlet.

Now if you ask a baggy-eyed Daft Lad in 2023, twenty years later, the answer is actually the same (maybe it is for you too, though you may have swapped Hamlet for Titus Andronicus), albeit I’ve swapped ‘sketch show’ for ‘sitcom’. As soon as sketch shows return to favour in the eyes of broadcasters I’ll be right there, armed with my Age of Enlightenment sketches though!

So, that’s a relatively clear answer to the question. But it’s not quite as simple as that.

Unlike in other industries, pathways for progression aren’t quite so neatly laid out. If you want to be a manager somewhere it’s easy – sacrifice having a life outside of your company and you can be one.

Want to be an engineer? Get a degree or an apprenticeship, work your way up and you’ll be designing space rockets before you can say X.

Going back to my example then, want a sitcom on the telly? Write one. Got one? Great. Get an agent, else no one will read it. An agent might not read it either. They’ll be inundated. But let’s say you get one.

The agent sends it off. The broadcasters dismiss it. It’s not very good.

Write another one. And another one. And another one. Or don’t. Stick with the first one. Re-write, tweak and repeat. Still a no? Hmm. How about this iteration? Still a no!? Jeez.

And then suddenly, your dreams come true. A pilot for your show is commissioned. You mention that the main part is written for you to play, by the way.

Well, no, that won’t fly. There’s someone who’s already in the top 125 on IMDb and they’re ready to swoop in and take the part.

So you don’t get to act, save for maybe a small part in episode four should the full series get commissioned. But your pilot is getting made.

But will it get picked up?

And if it does, will it get good reviews?

And will people watch it?

And what about series two!?

And those are just questions your mortgage advisor will be asking.

If the answer to any of those questions is no, then that’s it. Your shot. You were that close. But it’s a no.

Or it’s a yes – and you become the next Ricky Gervais. Happy days!

You might be reading this and thinking why the hell would anyone endeavour on such a path? That’s a question that’s really easy (for me anyway) to answer.

Because I have to.

It’s in my bones. It’s in my spirit. It’s me. Some are put on this earth to solve humanities biggest problems – or to make things worse like replacing real cashiers at the supermarket with self-scans. Some people are born to make ill people healthy, some to make sad people happy.

I’m still working out what my role is (as are casting directors). I just know it lies in my fingers, in my voice, in my body.

I hope I get to show you some time.

DL x