Actor / Actress Salary

Highest Salaries By City for Actor / Actress Jobs

Top Cities by Popularity for Actor / Actress Jobs

Highest Salaries By City Top Cities by Popularity

Highest Salaries By City 1. Los Angeles, California 2. New York, New York Top Cities by Popularity 1. Los Angeles, California 2. New York, New York 3. Hollywood, California 4. Atlanta, Georgia 5. Seattle, Washington 6. Minneapolis, Minnesota

What are Salaries of Professional Actors?

Shakespeare might have said that all the world's a stage, but that doesn't make it easy to become a professional actor. Since many acting jobs only last a few months or even as little as a couple of hours, it can be difficult for an actor to find steady employment, let alone a reliable actor salary. If you've chosen to try to make your career on the stage or screen, no doubt you've been warned by well-intentioned friends and family that actor salaries can be quite small - there's a reason the phrase "starving artist" came into being, after all. However, before you go out and get one of those day jobs everyone says not to quit, consider that there are thousands of people who do manage to live comfortably on an actor salary. Arm yourself with detailed actor salary research to help you make informed decisions about your acting career.

Actor Salary Data

An actor salary varies a great deal. A man with one line in a local production of The Time of Your Life is still an actor. So is George Clooney. That doesn't mean that one man's salary has anything to do with the other's. This is why, for actor salary research in particular, it's important to look at median actor salaries instead of average actor salaries - it discounts both the highest and lowest salaries to give you a more realistic picture (for more on this topic, read the classic Ask Dr. Salary article, "Why is Median Better than Mean for a Typical Salary?").

PayScale's Actor Salary by State chart shows that New York and California are among the top states for high actor salaries. It may be tempting to pack up and move to New York to try your hand as a Broadway star, but it's worth it to look into regional theater in other states with high actor salaries as well. If you don't make your big break right away, keep at it - measuring Salaries of Professional Actors by Years Experience shows that actors with 10 to 19 years of experience earn the highest actor salaries by a long shot.

Interested in other careers in the arts? Continue your salary research with PayScale's detailed reports on a Makeup Artist Salary and Musician Salary.