Facing Difficult Odds as an Actor, Featuring Morgan Brittany

Morgan Brittany is an actress and political commentator. She currently appears on Politichicks, an online political web series, and is a contributor to the Town Hall Finance website. Though Morgan Brittany enjoys her career, she understands that the entertainment industry isn’t all roses. Actors and actresses face incredibly difficult odds when auditioning for roles, as well as some of the following challenges:

– Actors face barriers to joining the Screen Actors Guild (SAG). Most movie and television networks will only cast SAG actors as it’s in their financial interest to do so. However with the merger of the two unions, SAG and AFTRA, it has become easier for performers to join. With the abundance of media outlets these days, there are also many non-union jobs available. Online casting services offer submissions for web-only series and low budget films which tend to be non-union. These jobs are often very low paying.

– Though the public tends to hear about the exorbitant salaries of Hollywood’s top-paid performers, acting generally isn’t lucrative for the majority of actors. In fact, the median hourly wage for American actors was just $17.44 when data was released in 2010. Recently it was revealed that being an actor was the fourth worst paying job in America.

Though these challenges and more are realities for those in the entertainment industry, people may still flock to available jobs, as the industry continues to grow in revenue and content offerings.