To find it sad that privately educated actors dominate telly/film?

[chulast]

6% of the population go to private school yet the majority of successful British screen actors have been privately educated.

I just find it quite bleak really and makes it feel like it's nigh on impossible to make it in that industry without a leg up and connections.

I feel sad when the daughters of Phil Collins and flipping Bono bag the plum roles. They are already so utterly fortunate and never actually need to work at all money wise. There would have been hundreds of young actresses desperate for those opportunities. Depressing. Bonos daughter can’t even act.

I’d say doctors is distinct from the arts thing because the thing with doctors is that they can’t just waltz in because their dad is one or because they have money.

You need to get certain very high grades and do the work and while I’m sure that’s made a bit easier if you have rich parents to support your education before and during uni - you still can’t get away with getting in based on connections.

Whereas someone could very well get an acting role, a book deal or some other job in the arts with very little talent/ability etc because they have connections .

Some nepo babies start out as horrible actors but they eventually get better because they’re given chance after chance while getting paid well to continue . A working class /less connected actor too wouldn’t be given that opportunity to get better on the job. They need to be good BEFORE they get a decent role (which make sense)

To be fair I don’t actually think it’s the schools it’s the money and connections of the parents so them being at private school is incidental to that.

Anecdotally I don’t see average kids at normal private schools with parents doing normal albeit quite well paid jobs getting particularly amazing opportunities. It’s the super rich international clique and those whose parents know and have leverage with successful people already in the arts. It’s the social sets of the parents.

So Keira knightly / Lily Allen their mothers were senior casting directors.

I grew up in a deprived area. At middle school the deputy head was part of a theatre group so she did put on a few plays every year. But there was no drama class, music we learnt the recorder. At senior school there was no drama gcse, there might have been a lunch time group but I can’t remember. Music was violin or guitar most kids didn’t do it as you had to pay. Career advice was looking at working in a shop or a nursery or getting a trade. Few children applied for uni. There wasnt consideration to leave the town. When you grow up and no one tells you there’s anything more. You don’t know.

It's such an expensive area to succeed in. My daughter is very interested in performing arts. She does a lot of local acting/dancing classes and some in London. Even this is incredibly expensive. We are middle-income earners and quite a big chunk of my salary goes on her hobby. At the London group there are kids who audition and/or perform in the West End. You need be to be able to afford either a SAHP or a full-time nanny for a child to participate in all the auditions (often held at short notice) let alone perform. I'm sure the same is true of TV roles.

Actors will often be reliant on the bank of Mum and Dad for a long time. Even just auditioning for drama school is expensive. When you are looking for acting work you have to be available for auditions which means either not holding down another job or doing something flexible which will likely be low paid. Most jobs are London-centric. Gone are the days when a newly-trained actor could afford to live on a hospitality wage in London while looking for acting work.

Many private schools offer arts scholarships, but that doesn’t mean you don’t already need a bit of comfortable money behind the kid. My daughter has a friend who wants to work in musical theatre. He is incredibly lucky that his family could afford for his mum to give up work to support his career (and still be able to afford to pay for overnight trips to London for auditions etc). He is currently at a prestigious theatre college and I have no doubt he will succeed as he is talented and has developed that talent from being in primary school. He went to a public primary school, his parents had no plans for him to be privately educated but when the time came to go to secondary he auditioned for and got a scholarship to our local private school.

Because being a doctor isn’t a typical wc job is it? Exam invigilator wouldnt have a clue about student’s personal details such as their background, their job is to literally make sure no one cheats. You have to be pretty dense to think they would access to such information. So their judgement is based purely on observation.

There is also the issue that there is a lot of exploitation in the arts and creative trades - expecting work for free; unpaid internships; insecure work. You need money in the background to establish yourself.

I remember reading an interview with Benedict Cumberbatch. His parents (not posh, both actors) sent him to Harrow and begged him not to become an actor.

Exactly, so even though you’re middle class earners you agree it’s expensive. So working class parents won’t be able to afford these extra lessons then, will they?

Yes, that was my point. You have to have a decent income even to pursue it as a hobby.

We have good provision locally but you either need spare cash or to be free school meals level poor in which case there is some free provision (although you need to apply and have the time and interest of course).

The "middle" is entirely missing and I suspect that's where a lot of actors and musicians came from in the past.

Most of the Welsh actors I know who are known outside Wales - Matthew Rhys, Ioan Gruffudd, Iwan Rheon, Aneurin Barnard, Luke Evans, Morfydd Clark, Tom Rhys Harries - are not privately educated. Sir Anthony Hopkins and Richard Burton weren’t either.

Benedict's paternal family line is incredibly posh.

To be a doctor it does help if parents are doctors or if you are privately educated.
To get a university place you need to have some sort of experience either by working in hospital or GP which you can only normally get if you or have family in those jobs. You have to have training for the interviews which private schools are good at organising you can pay a tutor to help with.
Same will go for solicitors and barristers.

For solicitors (my profession) the university holiday "vacation schemes" from which most trainees are recruited last about 2 weeks paid at £500 a week (so in that case not unpaid) although they are very competitive to get.

On writers going back a bit George Orwell didn't go to university I think I remember hearing recently on radio 4.

I doubt anyone really disagrees on this thread. If your parents are either well off or extremely supportive (even relatively poor working class parents sometimes give up a career just to drive the child around to acting things or child beauty pageant or to their favourite high level sport where it becomes a massive part of the childhood.

The internet first and then AI has transformed areas like writing and introduced podcasts and youtubers and influencers which has given those from relatively modest backgrounds chances to do better eg at present I quite like some tree works videos which might sound incredibly boring but I do quite a bit of work on my own trees and it can be quite an interesting restful youtube to watch, when I was working on the patio, the men who run patio etc cleaning videos (and one company that does drain and sewer work in Liverpool) were my interest. I don't know how much they make but it has been a way to get into a form of broadcasting for some. It has downsides eg the internet means words are free. When I wrote my first book in about 1991 it was a huge deal to get something published by a publisher (other than if you paid for vanity publishing). Today so much is written free of charge the whole landscape for that area has changed.

Hence why there are so few wc actors out there on tv.

Wasn’t everyone kicking off not so long ago because he’s family owned a slave plantation?

On writers going back a bit George Orwell didn't go to university I think I remember hearing recently on radio 4.

No, but he was born 1903, when not many people went to university anyway, and he did go to Eton. I suspect his parents on equivalent income today wouldn't have been able to afford that now. Also, the path of an expat civil service life in the colonies isn't open to anyone now, which is what he started with. (I just finished reading a biography of Orwell.) And then he liked going round like a tramp, which I suspect neither his family nor his former school were impressed by. I think his parents weren't happy that he gave up secure employment in Burma to be a struggling writer - and he did struggle to make money ftom it.

benedict C is super privileged - if he’s implies otherwise ‘my parents begged me’ etc then he’s trying to downplay it

If you’re working class with a strongly regional accent you’re more likely to be typecast at first sight.

The middle class ‘RP’ neutral accent is a blank canvas on which you can almost ‘paint’ anything - you can play uneducated working class or aristocracy potentially

actors from wc backgrounds if they want mainstream success have often lost their regional accents and speak RP

For instance actors with a natural cockney accent would be perfect for shows like The Bill and London’s Burning. Sadly these shows are no longer with us. When I’ve read interviews with actors with working class /cockney actors they admitted they struggled to get roles outside these type of shows

Unfortunately, most of the arts are now elitist. Playing a musical instrument costs a fortune in lessons and instrument purchase-or hire (though you can’t get good stuff by hiring). Similarly acting lessons/singing lessons/ theatre group subs etc.
purchasing paint etc etc

Interesting I've seen Americans make exactly the same arguement (well about producers/directors not the actual actors) about Jewish people in Hollywood.

The real dilemma is why if only 6% of people go to private school does it feel like it's 80% of parents send their kids to private school on Mumsnet 😂

Soaps? I don't watch any but they all feature working people, not many affluent, surely?

I know the RP accent has often been seen as neutral and actors will have more opportunities if they can master it, but I disagree that it's a blank canvas. It's a rather idiosyncratic accent which does unusual things to vowels. Some are drawled (such as "taaaaaal" for "towel"), some are changed (e.g. the 1950s BBC newsreader tendency to pronounce "back" as "beck", and sometimes they are just swallowed, as in "hup sten" (half past ten).

People tend to see their own accent as a neutral base. I remember an Australian actor who worked in the US saying that the Aussie accent was neutral, like beige and you could just put colour on top.