In a candid conversation on the podcast An Actor Despairs, actor Kirk Acevedo spoke openly about the economic pressures facing working actors today, painting a bleak picture of an industry where steady middle-class careers are becoming harder to sustain.
Discussing the decline of film as a reliable source of income, Acevedo said television has effectively become the only viable path for actors in his position. “TV is really the only place to make a living now because it’s not in film for guys like me,” he explained. “I can’t even tell you what they want to offer us. It’s not even a livable wage.”
He argued that the television itself has changed dramatically, with major film stars increasingly moving into episodic roles, a shift that has intensified competition for working actors.
“All the movie stars, since there’s no more films the way it used to be, they’re all in TV,” he said. “Every Oscar winner is doing some eight-, ten-, or thirteen-episode show multiple times. We’re competing with Oscar winners. Should they pay Kirk his quote, or this guy who was nominated for an Oscar seven, eight, ten years ago? See the problem?”
Acevedo framed the situation as part of an economic pattern, comparing the industry’s transformation to the erosion of the middle class in other sectors. “The middle class, like with anything, in any economy, in any country, always gets squeezed out,” he noted. “We’re getting squeezed out.”
To illustrate the financial reality, he walked through a hypothetical scenario involving guest appearances, work that once helped sustain many actors.
“You’re married, one kid. Let’s say you do ten guest spots. That’s $100,000, right?” he said. “We take 20% out, that’s $80,000. Taxes, let’s $45,000. Let’s say your rent is $3,000. That’s $36,000 right there. Can you survive off ten episodes? No.”
He also described how industry pay structures have shifted in ways that reduce bargaining power for non-lead actors. “They don’t give you your quote anymore,” Acevedo said. “They half your quote, third your quote, or don’t even give you a quote. They just hire you as top of show. You cannot survive that way.”
According to Acevedo, the increasing reliance on recurring roles instead of series regular contracts allows studios to keep costs down while limiting stability for actors. “They make the top two on the call sheet regulars. Everybody else is recurring,” he explained. “And because everybody else is recurring, they can lowball you.”
When the conversation turned to collective action and industry leverage, Acevedo suggested that many actors feel powerless in the current environment. “We have no leverage,” he said bluntly. “This is a reality that no one’s talking about. There’s nothing to strike. Some actors aren’t even getting auditions.”
He described the level of competition in stark terms, emphasizing how oversupply has reshaped the labor market. “There are so many actors who are out of work that they have friends who are out of work,” Acevedo said. “It’s like sand, a tablespoon of sand in an ocean. The ocean is the competition. The sand is the product or the jobs.”
Ultimately, his outlook on the industry’s trajectory was pessimistic, particularly for actors who once relied on consistent supporting work.
“It’s just less opportunities for us as actors,” he concluded. “It doesn’t matter how good you are, there’s just less opportunities, more competition, less content. I just don’t think you can make a living. When middle-class actors are having trouble, that’s the problem. It just doesn’t trickle down.”
