Are British Actors Better Educated than American Ones?

Ian McKellan: Graduate of the Royal Shakespeare Academy.

Jennifer Lawrence: Dropped out of Hollywood High.

I think, regardless of formal education, Brits are exposed to more culture, art and languages. This definitely broadens your horizons and informs your views. Americans are more insular.

Helen Mirren, who grew up working class, has said it's harder and harder from people who did not go to the British "public" schools (which in the US we would call boarding schools) or to Oxbridge to make it in theater or television or film in the UK--that acting has become an "old boys and girls" network for the wealthy.

Americans are dazzled by British accents

British actors are more likely to go to universities with good acting programs, or acting schools.

Hollywood is only interested in actors who drop out of high school and start working and learning in front of the camera as teens, like Lawrence and Scarlett Johanssen.

Of course, people who are just pushed in front of a camera at 14 don't have a solid technique and a deep understanding of their craft, and they don't tend to develop into interesting adult actors. So when they need someone who can actually act, Hollywood brings in the well-trailed Brits and Australians! But of course they couldn't possibly be interested in any American with the same sort of training, they're too old to start.

When people go to university or to a conservatory in the UK, there really isn't what have here anything like a liberal arts education like we have in the U.S. As a friend of mine who "read" physics when I lived in England said, "in the UK we become experts in our fields" as the idea of taking classes in various fields or taking electives was something quite foreign to him. Conservatory students in drama take related things like movement, diction, theatre history, period dance, and such, but aren't necessarily getting a well-rounded education though. I would think Oxbridge people like John Cleese, Emma Thompson and such "read" whatever their field was, but did their own extracurricular reading to inform their writing and acting careers. Typical American and British conservatory students haven't been exposed to social sciences, natural sciences, math, or most anything besides the humanities since from before they entered these schools.

British actors are well known to be, shall we say, chock full of themselves!

The only ones who make it across the pond are the educated ones. Americans, for instance, have no idea who Danny Dyer is.

R5 Hate to break it to you, but SacrJo attended The Professional Children School in NYC, which has a long history of educating actors, musicians, dancers and more. Up the block from there is LaGuardia High School for the Performing Arts where actors like Timothee Chalamet and Ansel Elgort went. PCS is grades 6-12 and LaGuardia is a High School, I don’t know how many other countries have formalized programs for children to learn their craft at those young of ages. We have gets undergrad programs like CMU and then grad programs like Yale School of Drama and Juilliard.

Sometimes, through affectation, they just come off as more educated when they’re really not. Jeremy Irons famously copped to that.

Careful, too, OP that you not mistake the cornucopia of talented Australian actors for Brits.

R11, aren't Australians just dollar-store Englishmen?

My husband’s sister is an actress. She trained at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London. He got to know a few of her classmates, and he was not impressed. When he sees them on TV he can tell me who was a cokehead, who was a nympho, etc.

[quote] She trained at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London. He got to know a few of her classmates, and he was not impressed. When he sees them on TV he can tell me who was a cokehead, who was a nympho, etc.

Carrie Fisher went there. She was both.

I don't know why it matters, how educated actors are. I will say that James McAvoy who I believe is working class, has talked about how the upper or upper middle class have taken over in British acting and theatre/film and that we no longer see the working class represented very much in British theatre/film, either in actors or in subjects. The same seems to be true to some extent in the USA. MOst of the successful people seem to come from posh middle class backgrounds now. And of course that is reflected in subject matter.

I believe Miss Claudia Casswell graduated from the Copacabana School of Dramatic Arts.

What r3 said.

Acting in the UK is dominated by people who come from well off families and went to posh schools. Its more common in America to see actors who come from a working class background.

Wrong about American actors, R17, it's become a field for the wealthy and well-connected here, too. Nepotism is fucking rife in Hollywood, most of the young actors you've heard of have parents who work in the entertainment industry and who can get them in the door. The few that come in from outside tend to be from very wealthy families, like the Mara sisters.

It's very rare for an American from a working-class background to be able to break into acting these days, it could be done in the 20th century but no more.

Does it have anything to do with the British casting for talent - talent which might be a result of theater and other education - while Americans cast on looks - looks which are independent of education?

[quote] James McAvoy who I believe is working class, has talked about how the upper or upper middle class have taken over in British acting and theatre/film and that we no longer see the working class represented very much in British theatre/film, either in actors or in subjects. The same seems to be true to some extent in the USA.

A HUGE number of them are related to people in entertainment - actors, directors, producers, agents, singers, etc - and media (Journalists, families own newspapers, magazines, publishing houses). It’s considered delightful when someone’s kid waltzes into the lead in a tv show or movie because mommy and/or daddy is connected. It’s as true in the UK as it is in Hollywood. Look at rock groups - most of them have the children of band members in the group now. Funny how children of famous people never argue that they don’t want to follow in mom or dads footsteps.

Britain had “angry young men” and “kitchen sink dramas” in the 1960s and lots of young men & a few young women from working class backgrounds became movie stars. Michael Caine (Maurice Joseph Micklewhite), Peter O’Toole, Albert Finney, Richard Harris, Richard Burton (Richard Walter Jenkins Jr), Terence Stamp, Lawrence Harvey (Laruschka Mischa Skikne), Carol White, Eileen Atkins, Jean Marsh. More actors than actresses - most actresses were middle class, upper middle class or from theatrical families. But as the angry young man & kitchen sink films faded, fewer & fewer working class men had a chance to become actors. Scholarships to drama schools dried up - I think many scholarships were paid with public funds through national theater. Those started going away in the 1970s.

Nowadays, children of tv people & theatrical families just waltz right into their own shows - Cumberbatch, Laurence Fox, Emilia Fox, Samuel West, (the late) Archie Lyndhurst....

Yes they are American actors just play themselves

When Brits say "middle class" (which most people wouldn't necessarily think was 'posh' at all), they mean the AGA-buying, Maldon-sea-salt-consuming upper middle class, right?

I remember when the members of Oasis used "middle class" as a slur against their rivals Blur back in the mid-nineties. They were really saying they were rich kids. I'm Dutch, and we would never use "posh" and "middle class" in the same sentence, as virtually everyone is middle class here (at least in theory).

It seems to me that American actors often do things that make them seem really clueless to most people. They act like eight-year olds or people with low IQs.

I'm thinking about that Imagine video. "Here's an idea. Why don't a bunch of us multi-millionaires get together and sing 'Imagine no possessions' from inside of our mansions, at a time when millions are losing their jobs. That'll cheer the flyover-people up and make them love us!"

Anyone of even average intelligence could have seen that was a bone-headed idea, yet many in Hollywood did it.

Yes, because the British education system is better than the American.

Have the likes of Hiddleston, Cumberbatch, Firth, and Redmayne (or any of their female counteparts) ever been cast as working-class characters?

Brit actors are more thoughtful?

In the UK the successful actors are usually from posh backgrounds so it stands to reason they would be better educated. But there's a lot fewer of them.

They used to be. It used to be common practice for actors to go to college, then drama school, then start working.

Now the government has cut funding so students can only get financial aid for one. (college or drama school)

Americans typecast their actors. They have to be good looking & they must be recognizably the same in each movie. When you watch British tv shows the actors play all different kinds of characters wearing wigs, glasses and looking ugly & dowdy. American actors don’t want to look ugly & uninteresting.

In America, we have reality “stars.” I think there’s one cumulative high school education between the Kardashian milk cows.

oh and Drama schools are in financial trouble.

Drama Centre is closing and LAMDA cut 80 percent of their staff due to covid.

"I remember when the members of Oasis used "middle class" as a slur against their rivals Blur back in the mid-nineties. They were really saying they were rich kids."

R22, the British define "upper class" has having a title or belonging to the aristocracy, they call rich people who aren't titled "middle class". The definition of upper class and middle class are rather different in America, much more based on how much money a person has. In Britain the Middletons are considered to be middle class, as they're rich but not titled, in America they'd be considered upper class as they're rich and act posh.

That's got to be a bit confusing for people who aren't native English speakers.

So you don't necessarily distinguish between lower-middle, middle-middle, and upper-middle class in Britain, a la Paul Fussell?

R3 nails it and it’s sad. A real loss for the culture as it’s not just actors but all arts these days.

R22 That’s because for some reason Americans abandoned the term working class and decided everyone with a job of any kind up to surgeons are all middle class. It’s ridiculous to here Walmart workers called middle class and it’s beyond ridiculous to here someone say they are a doctor earning 600,000 but comfort themselves middle class. In Britain the terms never changed and there is a huge and noticeable gal between the middle classes and the working classes. Remember as recently as the 80s, 40% of Brits were living in council housing. A working class Brit in his 50s had a kind of childhood most DLers couldn’t imagine but if you’ve seen a show like The Royal Family you can see how a family like that would feel a million miles away from a family of 2 teachers living in a detached house with an Audi and a Volvo on the drive.

R3- I would HARDLY call Helen Mirren WORKING CLASS. Her grandfather was a RUSSIAN ARISTOCRAT.

Helen Mirren? You'll be calling DL semi-fave Charlotte Rampling 'working class' next.

I’d highly recommend seeking out the work of working class comedians and actors and writers,. It’s been my experience that a great many Americans are unaware of the British working classes and see the typical/majority Brit as a well to do, cultured, better educated faw faw faw accented toff. In reality those people are such a tiny spec of the population. As has been said it’s very rare to find an working or even middle class person breaking into the arts and nepotism is just as rife as Hollywood, I’d say it’s worse because the pond is smaller. But while it may be a bit difficult to adjust to the accents at first, British people have tackled working class issues on tv for a long time in a very realistic way (no happy endings, no lotto wins, no moving on up to the east side)

Of course they are! But might it be due to the fact that education in the US is expensive and in not in the the UK?

If I remember Helen spoke out on the issue as did Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, Michael Caine, Ian McShane and possibly others. That does not mean they can all be considered working class just because they notice the problem.

I’d also say you are all vastly overestimating the British education system: it was at its best after WW2 through the 80s when it offered working class people a ticket to the middle classes and many did break through into politics, medicine, law, arts. We even had working class prime ministers! It’s all turned the other way now. Parliament is again dominated by the children of privilege who have never worked a job outside politics. The avenues into politics for the working classes such as the trade union movement have dried up. There have been several changes to the education system since the 80s that have dumbed down the average person. If I’m being honest I’m not so sure a random person plucked from a council estate in Liverpool and a random pulled from a housing project in Chicago would really differ all that much. Americans may hold into the romantic idea that the Brit will reel off Shakespeare and give an overview of the ME crisis but there’s no politer way of saying that many people I know are thick as shit.

80% of Britain's so-called "Working Class" are now Welfare-Recipients.

"[R22] That’s because for some reason Americans abandoned the term working class and decided everyone with a job of any kind up to surgeons are all middle class."

Not true, the US definitely has a working class, although the term "blue-collar worker" is more common for some reason, even though the working classes stopped wearing denim shirts decades ago. There is a strong divide between the working class and the middle class, and due to both the decline of the public education system and social/class discrinimation, it's become much harder for working class kids to get into the middle class. If they do, they usually do so with student loan debts crushing their economic growth for life.

The US is also full of reactionary idiots who don't want to admit they're poor, and who think their horrible job at Walmart makes them better than their neighbors the meth dealers, and who don't think the rich should pay taxes because that will really cut into their upcoming lottery win.

The term working class was invented by Marx because he wanted to differentiate between those salary-earners who worked and those who lived on what he termed "the unearned increment" of capital.

The US and the Brits both have a shocking amount of unemployed layabouts who live off the teat of their respective governments.

Relevant doc

"The US and the Brits both have a shocking amount of unemployed layabouts who live off the teat of their respective governments."

Although in the US, the primary beneficiaries of government largess are the corporations and the wealthy. "Welfare" for the poor is almost ended, even the deathly ill have a hard time getting disability, for the most part the American poor are abandoned to the streets.

only about 20 British actresses have won Best Actress. About equal to my nominations.

R20 Yes I hadn’t known until I saw an interview with Tracey Ullman where she said they didn’t just give her a scholarship, they even paid for her bus fare and lunch! Needless to say she was very grateful and lamented that such help is not there anymore. I believe Gordon Ramsey has also said that without the programs available in the 70s for young men in his situation he would still be in a block of flats. Again I was gobsmacked at the help he got and am so sad we lost all that. It’s not too far off the US situation now. Labour has lost the working class and there’s a lot of I’m all right Jacks and working class boys who did good and are now raging Tories. A lot of the people I grew up with are hell bent of sending foreigners home and are so easily manipulated into voting against their interests.

Good looks and excellent cock-sucking abilities are the necessary requirements to be an actor in America. These require no education or literacy.

In Britain, talent is required and that talent is often underpinned and enhanced by a decent education.

Nah R48 you just need to know someone or come from money these days. They try to hide it in the press but the overwhelming majority have relatives in the business in some capacity. The last actress to break out on Normal People is the daughter of the head of Sky TV. Another kid who sadly passed away recently walked right I to his own show as a teen, his father is an actor. Even the extras wranglers on set have connections. It’s a very small, tight knit and closed community. The route for anyone without money and connections is comedy these days. Try to get something into Edinburgh Fringe and her noticed. Comedy is far more welcoming to common people and the general public loves a good working class comedian.

Serioisly r45.

The welfare system in America is a joke, people are not living easy off the government teat. Please go talk to some actual poor people r43.

R1, Jennifer Lawrence is actually a *middle school* drop out. Seriously! There’s a reason her vocabulary consists primarily of four-letter words.

Helen Lawson, dame: School of Hard Knocks

Dame Sybil Thorndyke: Royal Central School of Speech and Drama

R50, over 50% of people in the U.S. pay NO income tax. Don't give me that B.S. about the working poor struggling to put food on the table.

You won't lower yourself to shop at Walmart, but they are there, blowing their fat welfare checks on big screen TVs and cheap Chinese clothing.

British actors actor. American actors pose.

Ben Whishaw's working class and went to RADA on a scholarship. Do they make an exception for the super-talented?

R55 Or the super gay? It would be nice if all the old gays without families would leave their money as scholarships for out gay students to get a head. Being out as an adolescent is still very hard and the need to escape home and sometimes even violence or disownment is still high. It would be nice if it was called something easily identifiable to someone gay, but that the general population and their family wouldn’t necessarily know that it’s the gay scholarship program. Such as for this field it’s the Jackobi Fund or the MCkellan Endowment.

^ *** Jacobi, McKellen***

Literacy is useful for actors who need to read scripts and learn all those lines. Imagine having to read and learn all those lines for a four hour play like Hamlet.

America TV performers who stand in front of a camera for a minute at a time don't need literacy.

Hollywood prefers their main actors and actresses to look and act stupid aka simple to appeal to the mouth breathing masses. Sure, the occasional highly trained English actor gives the project a whiff of sophistication (think Michael Bay blockbusters which always have some English actor in it to give it a shred of credibility), but for the most part it's the simple "Hulk, smash!" guys who get the leading roles in blockbuster movies. Foreign actors who want these leading roles can't come off as too smart and too sophisticated. Or at least have some good sense of humor to make themselves look foolish or approachable in public. Of course, there are exceptions to that rule.

I have worked for everything I have!!!

All the professional arts fields are dominated by people from wealthy or connected backgrounds these days, because nobody who isn't connected or wealthy can afford to break in, because of economics as much as anything. Used to be that someone who wanted to be an actor could go to NY, London, or LA, and wait tables and live in a crap apartment, now low-income housing is vanishing from the big cities, and a person without funds can't live on part-time work and devote their free time to performing arts classes or writing or auditions. So the whole culture of kids who live on dreams and ramen has vanished from the big cities, nowadays all the artsy wannabes are being funded by their parents, because a young person just can't live in the big cities without a serious career or subsidies from somebody.

Of course all the wannabes with no money are trying to break through to a career on youtube, but in order to get notidced there they actually do have to beat out about a billion competitors in their field.

"professional arts"?

Is that like Jumbo Shrimp?

More like commercial arts.

Ewan McGrego - diploma from the Guildhall Schiool of Drama

Samuel L. Jackson - graduate of the "go fuck yourself" academy of urban acting

No.

R1, there's no such thing as the Royal Shakespeare Academy. Ian McKellan is, however, a graduate of the University of Cambridge.

R63 And Samuel L is a much more captivating and interesting screen actor imo. There should be room for everyone and a mix of backgrounds in the profession but R60 has nailed why it’s no longer than way.

Yes. On average, the typical middle class Briton, Frenchman, and German is better educated than his/her American counterpart.

Most Middle class Europeans can speak a second language (English on average). Most American cannot.

Most educated, middle class Europeans and Britons have a great grounding in common knowledge. Americans do not have this.

Public education in this country is too uneven, because of class, region, and control by states. Getting away from traditional liberal education is making Americans dumber. An emphasis on non-Western authors and perspectives at the expense of the Western Canon is also making Americans dumber. A grounding in the Western Canon will guide the student to non-Western perspectives, ideas, authors, and histories.

Chaucer and Shakespeare are not just "dead, white men." Their writing still speaks to the human condition.

R67 oh, look who thinks their shit don't stink!

R67 I wouldn’t lump Britain in with the continent. British people do not have a second language in general and call the continent “out foreign” as do the Irish. I was educated in the U.K. and the level of public education has declined compared to what it was in its “glory days” from after the war until the 80s. It was a mistake to phase out the grammar schools imo. I wouldn’t say the US system is better, it’s not, not the British system should not be held up as any kind of ideal and people who leave school after their GCSEs - almost 20% of Brits - have no received an adequate education imo. If you think those kids have a grounding in the western canon you’ve never spent any time with working or lower middle class Brits

Notice I said the educated, middle class, R69.

And R68, my shit does stink. I just think Americans are starting to lag behind in education compared to many other people in the world...including the Japanese and the Chinese.

I teach history at an American university. I've taught European students from all over the continent and the British isles. I've taught Chinese, Japanese, Arabs, Indians, Australians, and New Zealanders. It's purely anecdotal, but they are better grounded in the basics than the average American university student.

Brits are generally better educated than Americans, but there's also a huge underclass in the UK, bigger than most countries on the Continent. There's no equivalent to tabloids (or "red-tops," as they're called these days, to distinguish them from former broadsheets) like The Sun and The Daily Mirror in Europe. Newspapers that crude and semi-literate would never sell in such large numbers in France and Germany; that is, if they could even exist at all.

BILD Zeitung in Germany would come closest to British-style tabloids/red-tops:

Every country has its tabloid media. The uncomfortable truth is that stupid is everywhere and stupid buys stupid stuff and watch stupid and manipulative entertainment. Countries like the UK and Germany have mandatory household subscription (for every household that owns a radio, TV, or computer or any media gadget, but low income households can get out paying that) which finances its public service programming serving the purpose to educate and inform rather than entertain using the lowest common denominator.

Generally speaking it's good to have alternative options of entertainment which can broaden your horizon. You may discover things that interest you providing you with greater understanding and appreciation what's out there.

Lots of actors in the US are quite well educated. Jodie Foster graduated with honors from Yale, Meryl Streep from Vassar and Juilliard, Glenn Close, College of William and Mary, Susan Sarandon, Catholic University, Josh Hartnett, Suny Purchase, Bradley Cooper, Georgetown University, Mayim Balik, Ph D in neuroscience UCLA, David Duchovny, Princeton, Sigourney Weaver, Stanford, John Cusack NYU. Sure, there are lots of actors who are poorly educated, at least in terms of higher education. I wouldn't say they are the norm, just part of the mix. In the past, a decent education was certainly helpful for stage actors, if for nothing else, simply for learning to memorize lines and to learn accents. Americans tend to talk informally, which can make them sound as though they are poorly educated, but that doesn't mean that they haven't confronted intellectual issues in their time.

A received accent (British accent for radio and acting) is an artificial accent meant to denote wealth and refinement. It is the "natural" accent of very few people in Britain, even the wealthy. People learn it in school, with the idea that it might help with future employment in government or for acting. Many British people are even turned off by it and refuse to use it, even if they could. Would-be actors study it intensely, but they also study regional British accents to give them a wider range of roles - to play Scottish people, people from northern England, people from the lower class districts of London, etc. Americans study regional accents as well - southern accents, NY accents, Boston accents - but because people move around the US so frequently, the majority of Americans quickly gravitate towards a neutral accent whenever they feel it will make them fit in better.

Linking to an Essex accent

[quote]Jennifer Lawrence: Dropped out of Hollywood High.

Wrong!

Jennifer Lawerence dropped out of Junior High.

[quote]In Britain the Middletons are considered to be middle class, as they're rich but not titled, in America they'd be considered upper class as they're rich and act posh.

Were the Middletons rich? Did the party company business make them that much dough or did it enough for them to run the company full time?

Our daughters are well educated and we'd paid a high price for it!

R74, you can include Samuel L Jackson in your list American actors (who are well educated). After going to the “Go fuck yourself Academy of Urban Acting”, he went on to graduate from Morehouse, R63.

Here’s the Forbes 2020 list of highest paid actors (not all of them are American, though) along with their education background:

1. Dwayne Johnson - changed three high schools

2. Ryan Reynolds dropped out from Kwantlen Polytechnic University in British Columbia

3. Mark Wahlberg famously, Calvin Klein School of Underwear Arts; otherwise, “did not receive his high school diploma until June 2013”

4. Ben Affleck - from wiki: “spent a few months studying Spanish at the University of Vermont, chosen because of its proximity to his then-girlfriend,[12] but left after fracturing his hip while playing basketball.[35] At 18, Affleck moved to Los Angeles,[29] studying Middle Eastern affairs at Occidental College for a year and a half”

5. Vin Diesel - Hunter College

6. Akshay Kumar dropped out of Guru Nanak Khalsa College of Arts, Science & Commerce to study martial arts

7. Lin-Manuel Miranda - Wesleyan University

8. Will Smith - “had no intention of going to college”

9. Adam Sandler New York University's Tisch School of the Arts

10. Jackie Chan - China Drama Academy

Now, I could find similar current list for British actors, so here’s the one for richest British actors from a few years back:

10. Daniel Day-Lewis, $50 million - Bristol Old Vic Theatre School

9. Patrick Stewart, $60 million - Bristol Old Vic Theatre School

8. Michael Caine, $75 million - Wilson's Grammar School

7. Hugh Grant,$80 million - New College, Oxford (on Galsworthy scholarship)

6. Sir Roger Moore, $90 Million - Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (fees paid by Brian Desmond Hurst)

5. Sacha Baron Cohen, $100 Million - Christ's College, Cambridge

4. Daniel Radcliffe, $110 million - Hogwarts and on-set tutors

3. Rowan Atkinson, $130 million - Newcastle University (Electrical and Electronic Engineering), The Queen's College, Oxford (MSc in Electrical Engineering)

2. Sir Anthony Hopkins, $160 million - Royal Academy of Dramatic Art

1. Sir Thomas Sean Connery, $300 Million - naval gunnery school in Portsmouth

^ couldN’T

R80 ALL MEN! SEXIST!

Is part of what’s at issue is that without homegrown things like Disney, Nickelodeon, Bryan Singer and a plethora of “family” centered sitcoms, England does not have the need for child actors and their output is focused more on adult entertainment and actors who have had more formal educations? Also, what are the child actor laws like there, are they more restrictive on how much time a child act and make it less likely to be characters in projects?

[quote] I think, regardless of formal education, Brits are exposed to more culture, art and languages.

No they aren’t. Britain is the Florida of Europe.

R84 Yes I hate running down my own here but the average Brit is watching Eastenders and Ant and Dec. They are going to retail parks and outlet stores on the weekend. They watch footie and go on package holidays where they purposefully avoid even tasting the local food let alone experiencing the local culture. It seems so strange to me when outsiders think the average John and Jane are exposed to culture, art and languages. I mean, art?! Languages?! - in Britain! Lol Many of us can’t even speak our own properly.

Why do you need to be a graduate of Oxford or Harvard to be an actor?

It’s so weird when Americans pass comment on British society and idealise it so weirdly. It’s almost like some of them think everyone here sips tea from china cups, reads the Western canon, and habitually speaks proper English. Somehow they imagine it to be the oh so mannered opposite of inner city American life or something.

I love my country, but the reality is that the British state comprehensive education system has always been one of the worst in the developed world. Britain has a far more class based society than any on the continent so it’s difficult to say anything about the country as a whole. The upper middle class is very educated and worldly, as a whole. The vast working class and lower middle class like to watch footie and Love Island and are unfortunately victims of the comprehensive education system. I doubt they’d be any more worldly than Americans, and probably can’t speak English as well as the average American. They certainly don’t have any real contact with the Western canon haha.

[...]

Women, Forbes 2020 list:

1. Sofia Vergara: $43 million - studied dentistry for 3 years at National University of Colombia

2. Angelina Jolie: $35.5 million - high school graduate

3. Gal Gadot: $31.5 million - studied law and international relations at the IDC Herzliya college

4. Melissa McCarthy: $25 million - The Groundlings, an improvisational and sketch comedy troupe and school based in Los Angeles, California

5. Meryl Streep: $24 million - BA from Vassar College, MFA from Yale School of Drama

6. Emily Blunt: $22.5 million - boarding school

7. Nicole Kidman: $22 million - Phillip Street Theatre and Australian Theatre for Young People

8. Ellen Pompeo: $19 million - high school

British list (again, net worth based):

13. Olivia Colman $3 million - primary teaching at Homerton College, Cambridge, and drama at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School

12. Dame Maggie Smith $18 million - Oxford Playhouse

11. Dame Julie Andrews $30 million - high school

10. Dame Judi Dench $35 million - The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama

9. Dame Helen Mirren $50 million - New College of Speech and Drama

8. Emma Thompson $50 million - Newnham College, Cambridge

7. Kim Cattrall $60 million - one year at London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art

6. Helena Bonham Carter $60 million - high school

5. Kate Winslet $65 million - Redroofs Theatre School

4. Emma Watson $80 million - BA in English literature from Brown; also has a yoga teacher certificate to fall back to

3. Tracey Ullman $115 million - Italia Conti Academy of Theatre Arts

2. Catherine Zeta-Jones $150million - Arts Educational Schools

1. Salma Hayek - $8.6bn - studied International Relations at Universidad Iberoamericana (more importantly, why is she on the list?)

British actors, even lower-tier ones, have access to a huge literary and theatre tradition. There is also more emphasis on ensemble work, even at the upper levels. Not all UK actors get into RADA, but there are other dramatic academies, as well, including in Ireland (The Gaiety School, out of which came Colin Farrell and Aidan Turner, albeit Turner finished and Farrell didn't because he got a film role). The pool is smaller but deeper in my view.

America has produced many exceptional actors, both in the character and "star" categories, but it's more a catch as catch-can system. UK actors tend to be better trained and more respectful of language - there is more aim at good scripts and narrative, so that helps performances.

America tends to be more about visuals and "star" power, and there are far too many utterly terrible scripts, so American actors have far less chance of cutting their teeth on tougher work.

As for the "posh" legend these days: there are a handful of "posh" actors whose names everyone knows, but there are also plenty of non-posh actors, as well, at varied levels: Ben Whishaw, Charlie Hunnam, Sean Bean, David Morrisey, Robson Green - Matthew Goode and Tom Hardy are examples of mid-level backgrounds that are neither working-class nor straight out of RADA via Eton and Cambridge.

It's much more of a mixed bag than the headlines would suggest.

My hunch is that British actors are more experienced in the stage and therefore have more cultural education. I’ve also read that many of the younger actors were students at posh schools, for better or worse for the industry.

R91

I should have read each comment before adding mine but yours was written far better and more thoroughly.

R87 Thanks for your insight and sharing, especially about class. Do you think the root of this is still having a monarchy? Get rid of them and the class structure looses much of its power and can begin to correct over generations?

R93 - Thanks. Elizabeth Ashley once said that most of the time when she got a film role her first thought was, "How am I going to wrap my mouth around this junk?"

A good actor can make something out of a shite script, but s/he can't making something truly great out of it. You look at what actors like Laughton, John Mills, and Brenda De Banzie made out of their roles in a film like "Hobson's Choice" is a good example of memorable performances by people who were not "stars" as we understand it.

Laughton was the only "name" in the film at the time and he had the scene-stealing role, but Mills and De Banzie were already well-known stage and screen professionals and held their own with truly poignant performances. De Banzie later in her career played the wife/partner in the kidnap plot in "The Man Who Knew Too Much" and she did more with the look on her face as she hears Doris Day singing the song so the child hears it, and decides to let the child go, ruining the plot, is a good example of the stable of exceptional people the British theatre and literary tradition produced. She also played the unhappy wife of Laurence Olivier in "The Entertainer".

Who knows her name today?

All right, I'm giving my age away somewhat - I'm certainly younger than De Banzie, but hardly "young".

I hope these backgrounds aren't melting away with modernity, given how much talent they produced.

In the dreadful seventies, someone suggested turning Britain into one large film and television production company/film set - it was quite funny (although the seventies weren't here) but there was a reason for the suggestion.

It's what we've always done exceptionally well.

Counterexample: As a child, Aaron Taylor-Johnson (née Johnson, born to a lower-middleclass family in Bucks.) attended twelve years of stage-school (an alternative to regular comprehensive/state or public school) interspersed with long breaks to do touring theatre, then left basic education altogether at seventeen years old to go off and do some awful trashy teen romance & superhero films. He’s also got the chavviest most ear-grindingly horrid Estuary accent on Earth. Still, in spite of his low level of education and formal arts training, he’s done quite well for himself career-wide and financially; all through the sheer power of starting at pre-school age, growing up gorgeous, and simple refusing to quit and go away. Showbiz is run on presence and prettiness, nationality no object.

Of course, it’s a different kettle of fish to talk about real creative acting, rather than just professional screen-work.

R96 - Interesting example, thanks. You know, today, Colin Farrell admits he left Gaity to soon for that film role and should have stayed the course. This happens at RADA and LAMDA (Cumberbatch's dramatic alma mater) too, it's a known risk especially for the good-lookers who tend to get scouted and offered early roles, and drama schools try to discourage it. I'm not sure it would have made that much difference in Farrell's case - but it might have made the difference between keeping him out of the trouble he got into by "making it" too early. Turner, by contrast, doesn't have Farrell's film career, but got to do some Shakespeare and has been working steadily for 15 years with each role doing progressively more for him - he seems more "anchored" for lack of a better word, and more practical in approach. Whether that's a difference in character of the two men, or based on longer and better training, I can't say. But I will opine that Farrell should have had a better film career than he did, he's capable of sensitive performances.

ATJ has done reasonably well for himself but the question always is, what level was he aiming at, if any, and did he leave education too young to find out first?

It's not an arena I would want to compete in, I can tell you.

[quote]he’s done quite well for himself career-wide and financially; all through the sheer power of starting at pre-school age, growing up gorgeous, and simple refusing to quit and go away

Plus his marriage--and the connections, wealth, and exposure it has brought him.

R74, what you've linked to is the example of someone who's trying to do an exaggerated version of an Essex accent that you're extremely unlikely to hear in real life except from people who are deliberately trying to put on an accent because it makes them appear more "street".

You also have a weird idea of what a "received" British accent is and of how British people actually talk.

I feel like the British film industry is not doing that well anymore, certainly not like back in the 90s (Trainspotting, Four Weddings and a Funeral, The Full Monty, etc). What was the last big movie that was an international success? 1917 or was that a Hollywood production?

The tv industry seems to be doing ok though.

Not really, but they do have the advantage of having foreskins.

You don't get many young people from poor backgrounds in the arts any more because... Last year we clucked over an article about a young couple who moved to LA with $800 and a supposed contact with someone in the music industry. They almost immediately found themselves homeless, and were saved from life in a tent on Skid Row by crap jobs that left them desperately poor but with a roof over their heads, their dreams forgotten in the struggle to survive in a city with a destructively high cost of living. We all clucked over them, and said they were fools to make the move without enough money to live on for six months to a year.

And that's why only people from well-to-do or connected backgrounds are dominating the arts, it's economically impossible for poor kids to come to NY or LA and live while they try to crack the entertainment industry. Being poor is 24/7 job these days, it doesn't leave you any spare time or energy for your dreams.

[quote] Counterexample: .....Aaron Taylor-Johnson

He married a rich woman with industry influence who is a 100 years older than he is. Hardly a study in merit.

[quote] Thanks for your insight and sharing, especially about class. Do you think the root of this is still having a monarchy? Get rid of them and the class structure looses much of its power and can begin to correct over generations?

Just like the Utopia America has become since 1776.

I’ll add that London and Dublin are the same now. Savage cost of living. I know someone who attended the Gaiety in Dublin from a working class background, ended up with huge debt and nothing to show for it. The bank won’t accept “I’m waiting for my break” so you take a job to start paying it back and as way leads on to way you end up working to pay loans and rent and the dreams die. Nationality is also an impediment and the lucky few who get the golden ticket to the US are not representative. When casting directors hear you don’t have a US green card they are not interested. You have as much of a chance of them making an exception as you do winning the lotto. A lot of British/Irish actors who make it are actually either born in the US or have an American parent.

When I lived in London, my friend was going out with a guy who was a writing student. Masters degrees in writing were new to the U.K. then and he was from a well to do family so he didn’t need any side job and he could afford to “write” after graduation instead of getting a job. When I asked him who was on the course I laughed at his answer. It was 18 rich white kids, an older woman married to an investment banker and a token Asian kid. In the these degrees can cost 100,000!! So it’s not just acting. Good look breaking into writing without connections or a trust fund.

Heck, teaching is something that has to be subsidised by wealthy parents or a high earning spouse these days if you want to live a middle class lifestyle before you turn 45.

And - someone quoted Elizabeth Ashley upthread. I haven’t thought about her in a while. Always enjoyed her. Pity someone doesn’t find her and put a mic in front of her. I’d love to hear her steam of consciousness about Covid and Trump and New York and anything else she want to talk about. One of the last of the great old broads.

R95 Brenda specialised in playing harridans.

Her family were veterans on the music hall stage and they adopted the exotic name "De Banzie" because her father's real name was Edward Trout.

The fabulous Martita Hunt (who won the Tony Award as best Actress in New York, 1949) went to Queenwood Ladies' College in Eastbourne on the Sussex coast.

Yes, De Banzie wasn't pretty enough to play the sorts of charming ingenue roles that people like Vivien Leigh and Merle Oberon and Deborah Kerr got early on and often played the strong partner. But that's my point: the higher standard of writing and narrative in Britain offered opportunities to actresses like De Banzie and Flora Robson that I'm not sure would be available today. Robson once said that if she were to be born again, she'd rather return beautiful - she was a South Shields girl (speaking of non-posh) and also a RADA grad but her plain looks held her back. Once she began to gain some exposure, her career took off and she won many awards and left her mark on many films, such as "Wuthering Heights" and "Black Narcissus". But never, of course, as the ingenue who gets the guy.

For what it's worth, I think Hollywood in the 1930s, 40s, and 50s, also produced many finely written films. I think the difference in Britain was an expectation of good narratives based on a long theatre tradition.

I'm not sure that's going to last in Britain, though, either.

Oh, and a P.S. - look at Jean Simmons - she had little training, a great deal of luck, some natural gifts, and beauty that landed her early roles that got her noticed. Olivier after casting her as Ophelia in his family packed her off to the Bristol Old Vic to get experience and training, but by then she'd already been nominated for an Oscar based on Ophelia in a high-profile film!

So it's an example of beauty paving the way - even in the UK, with its reputation, beauty creates opportunities that other actresses or actors resent.

Factoid: William Wyler wanted Simmons for "Roman Holiday" and Howard Hughes refused to lend Simmons out. The role went instead to Audrey Hepburn and made her a star.

^* in his "Hamlet" - God only knows how auto-correct turned Hamlet into "family" . . .

Yes, Margot Asquith met Flora Robson at party soon after her first terrific performances on stage at the Old Vic.

Margot thought she was helping with some make up advice and she declared that Flora Robson had 'a Russian face'. I guess she was alluding to Flora Robson's facial similarity to Vaslav Nijinsky's sister, Bronislava.

I'm no lesbian but young Jean Simmons was phenomenally pretty in those days.

She appeared in a fascinating study of women's powerlessness in Pre-Welfare State Britain but her prettiness was a distraction from the main political message. The film was like a British version of 'Mildred Pierce'.

This discussion has been fascinating but I want to take a moment to get back to R13's comment -

[quote]He got to know a few of her classmates, and he was not impressed. When he sees them on TV he can tell me who was a cokehead, who was a nympho, etc.

Okay, aside from Carrie Fisher, who are we talking about? Let's get some good gossip out of this.

I’ll have to go back to the book I read recently about Carrie Fisher but if I recall most of her classmates were also into drugs and they used her for acquiring drugs and alcohol and abused her generosity. Some of them trashed her flat after a party. So I’d expect some good gossip is to had!

I'm British, educated, a great actor, and very, very straight.

You are beautiful, Henry!

Amy Adams, one of the highest-paid in Hollywood, didn't even go to high school.

Adams apparently did attend high school but (per Wikipedia) was "not academically inclined" while there, which seems pretty honest and is not something you often see written about famous and successful people, since it's pretty easy to leave out (or you could write that they "lacked focus in high school," which is less likely to make people wonder about the person's intelligence).

R118 - Re Amy Adams . . . there, again, you see? A bit of good luck and timing, but I think she's dull.

Back to Turner: a working-class boy from South Dublin with an electrician Dad and a reasonably successful ballroom dancer for awhile, who hated it and then left to try acting - he got into Gaiety, and emerges with significant exposure at least to literature, last year had a successful run in the West End doing "The Lieutenant of Inishmore" and is now living in Italy filming a Terence Malick film as well as filming a seven-part television series playing Leonardo Da Vinci. It's doubtful that he'd have gotten as far as he has without the training he got at Gaiety.

All right, he's not Tom Hiddleston with his Double First in Classics from Cambridge. But I don't think this is the kind of trajectory Adams could have achieved precisely because she didn't bother to get background. She's hardly someone whose name can carry a film, is she?

But the snobbery is still at work in Britain, I will say that.

When "Inishmore" opened, The Guardian reviewed it and with a large dollop of unconscious snobbery, characterised Turner's performance as "surprisingly good". Several posters wrote in to remind the Graun that Turner was a well-trained and experienced actor who'd graduated from Ireland's "RADA".

Do you think they would have said that about a Hiddleston performance?

Adams got lucky. To some extent, luck figures in all these people's careers, from the luck of good lucks (although I think Adams very plain), good timing, and good roles.

But I do believe that training pays in the end.

^*from the luck of good LOOKS . . .

Jesus, this auto-correct is driving me mad.

Oh, and I'm not Aidan Turner's mother, either. I'm just using him as an example of an actor who put in work and time on background and got farther than his "origins" would have predicted. Anyone would have supposed Hiddleston would have made a success of himself in some way or other, but not necessarily boys like Farrell and Turner, and Farrell went off the rails early on that I think marred his ability to make the most of what I do believe are natural gifts.

[quote]She's hardly someone whose name can carry a film, is she?

No, but then few people are these days, and she's liked and respected enough by her peers and the public. And I'm not a fan of hers but do think she carried "Sharp Objects" quite admirably.

I'd say Adams has carried the weight of many movies, though she's usually part of a solidly legit ensemble. Julie & Julie and Doubt with Meryl. American Hustle and The Fighter, where she more than held her own with Christian Bale. Nocturnal Animals with Jake. The Master w Joaquin. Big Eyes w Waltz.

She's most definitely a headliner.

R122 - I cannot agree on Adams carrying a film on her own. Streep was the marquee name in Doubt, not Adams. She may have done well enough, but as you point out, she's usually surrounded by other stars and on her own, she isn't the star or name that on its own is enough to persuade people to see the film. I've always found her competent but dull. She fades as soon as the lights go up.

Luke Evans, Welsh, graduated from the London Studio Center.

Another reason it's hard for non-famous young people to break into film or music these days is that in this era of social media you need to be instantaneously famous as soon as you make your first appearance.

The Gaiety in Ireland had really lost its lustre. I had some dealings with them 12 years ago and let’s just say there were a lot of problems and the training was not preparing the young actors for life as a working actor. The Lir is now *the* place and has already produced a very (male) talents. Ireland has always produced more male actors who broke into the U.K. and US. The Factory (started by Irish directors Kirsten Sheridan and Jim Sheridan) started as a place to train film actors and they had success producing more working actors in their very first year than The Gaiety had in the previous decade. They got very lucky with Jack Raynor who had US citizenship already and was able to break the US market and give the school great connections. It too has cooled off a little. I believe it has a different name now, Bow Street, but it is still the best training ground for screen acting. The issue for Irish actors is that with so little work in their own country they will be asked to tape auditions for screen roles in the U.K and have to be great on screen right off the Mark. This is where The Gaiety fell short and why the gap for The Factory/Bow Street opened up which diluted the power of The Gaiety, The Lir, affiliated with Trinity College, then came in and sealed the fate of Gaiety.

R126 - Really interesting information, thanks for posting. Sorry to hear that about the Gaiety - Turner and Farrell, of course, were there 20 years ago (one is near 40 and the other early 40s). I think, though, that "producing working actors in its first year" seems an indication that the training isn't in-depth - is that the point, to get working actors out there after a year? How does the training compare to LAMADA and RADA?

In terms of work in Ireland, I always thought the country had a strong theatre tradition, as well - so is it that all the money is in film and television work and that's why the impetus out to the UK and America?

R127 There is very little live theatre in Ireland outside Dublin. There isn’t enough work to support 100 full time actors let alone the few hundred who graduate every year from various colleges. Plays run for a few weeks, a few times a year to small houses. Most Irish people haven’t seen live theatre since they were dragged to a live Romeo and Juliet at 15 by their school. It’s also very badly paid and impossible to live in Dublin on the money. Irish actors equity is a joke. There is one agency that has a monopoly on extras and they make the extras pay €90 each year just to be on their books. They pay below minimum wage. Equity don’t care. Commercials pay a pittance. A fried was offered an audition in June for a supermarket commercial, the pay?, a €400 supermarket voucher! Equity don’t care. Casting directors offer sketchy paid workshops and training courses, they ask for payment for auditions. (They also struggle to make a living in the market) Some “agents” ask for money to be signed. Equity ignore all that. It is basically impossible to earn a living as an actor if you don’t get out of the country. There is one soap opera filmed there but a role comes up once in a blue moon.

Regarding The Factory/Bow St. The goal was to produce screen actors who knew how to audition and navigate the TV/film world. The instructors were all working directors and writers who had connections to get these kids into jobs. The film “What Richard did” was made by the founder of the school using mostly student of the school and that got them exposure. The idea was/is (I’ve lost contact with them and can’t vouch for Bow Street today) that young Irish actors will not be spending years in theatre and will either end up trying to break the U.K. screen acting market or quitting the business. When Brendan Gleeson’s sons and the children of other Irish celebrities were signed without training by the best agency in the country (Lisa Richards) and went straight into Broadway or into BBC series’ The Factory steeped in offering an alternative to the kids who were not willing to go 50K into debt to The Gaiety only to likely end up quitting, joining the civil service and earning 22K a year while saddled with the growing debt. It also came along during the last recession when thousands of young people were emigrating per day and I suppose the brutal honesty of “you have little chance of making it but here’s the skills you have to have to break in and access to our most success directors and writers and we won’t charge you 50K and throw you out 2 years later not knowing how to cold read or tape an audition”. It was an attractive message in a time of little hope for young people in the country. It’s possible they too have diluted their prestige by running lots of part time courses but Dublin rents are high and everyone has to make a living. The Lir, being affiliated to Trinity, doesn’t have to do that and can probably retain their prestige especially as they turned out the kid from ‘Normal People’.

R128 - Thanks again for the inside look. It is saddening to learn how bleak the picture is, especially given Ireland's rich literary tradition.

Yeah, okay, Gaiety, blah blah, but I am still waiting for WestEnder to come back and give us some dish on the alumni of the Central School of Speech and Drama. I had no idea that Gael Garcia Bernal went there. Although there are plenty I was aware of from this list. Aside from Fisher, who were the sluts?

All actors should be of the same status as carnies & streetwalkers, and until the 19th C. and the advent of film, they were. Never forget that.

Brits mostly used to consider actors as silly luvvies. A very healthy attitude.

However, in recent years, the American attitude of celebrity worship where that they have opinions of value has begun to leach into the media.

Why else would have the ridiculous situation of Gillian Anderson being interviewed on Margaret Thatcher, by the conservative bastion The Daily Telegaph, with the risible headline "Gillian Anderson was no great fan of Baroness Thatcher’s 'dictatorial' leadership style".

BITCH, PLEASE!!!! Your principle experience in life has been turning up on time and knowing your lines, not running a fucking country! You couldn't even deliver a believable *pretend* performance as her!

In United States middle class is nothing more than a construct. We do not have royalty nor titled nobility, so things tend to be defined upon how and were income is derived.

That being said in a very lose way "middle class" are or were "white collar" persons. Those who were level up from labor such as management that for all intents and purposes worked with their minds and not hands. Working class is just that; those whose income derives from a direct exchange of skills or trade for income. Construction, plumbers, carpenters, bus drivers, etc... up to and including the vast number of "pink ghetto" jobs such as nursing, secretarial, etc.. Any employee who clocks in and out is by and large "working class".

By 1950's onward, and especially by 1970's middle class became more of a lifestyle thing than how one made money. Much of this came about largely through expansion and accepted use of credit. Suddenly plumbers (who often earn just as much money or more than some doctors) had large homes in good areas, two or more late model cars in garage, took expensive holidays, etc.....

The availability of credit (in form of student loans) allowed many access to higher education that otherwise would not have been possible.

The career of Russell Tovey is an interesting case. He's almost a household name in the UK, with steady high-profile work, yet almost unknown in the America.

That Dwayne Johnson , a former professional wrestler with zero training is one of the highest paid actors in Hollywood tells pretty much everything you'd want to know about acting in USA.

It has long been said (or done) that one wanted to be a serious actor Americans headed over to Britain. OTHO British actors who wanted to make serious money came (and still are) to USA.

Rise of Dwayne Johnson and others is largely due to nature of how Hollywood approaches film making post studio system days, and especially since say 1990's or even 1980's.

You don't need heavy acting chops to do the sort of roles in action/animation whatever films that increasingly are a bulk of what Hollywood offers.

British Actors who are trained in theatre are classy.

American movie hucksters are trashy.

On another note British actors are famous for moving between stage, film and television. By doing all sorts of work with various actors and directors it allows them to practice and develop a range of skills.

Meanwhile once thought of as a backwater, television has become "it" far as many actors (or at least that is what they call themselves) in USA. One good sitcom that gets picked up for syndication and they are set for life. Cast of Friends started it, but it continued with shows like The Big Bang Theory.

Jim Parsons took much heat for leaving the Big Bang Theory (with a then annual salary of $26 million USD), but he did what while common in UK is almost unheard of in USA; an actor who left an excellent gig simply for no other reason than wanting to move on and do other work.

Mr. Parsons is a classically trained actor who didn't want to end his days on TBBT regardless of how much money studio threw at him.

List of notable Julliard drama grads. How many names can you spot that became "famous" actors?

Actors Studio alumni

R135 Not a fan of Dwayne Johnson, but his rise is a result of some intensely focused planning & effort plus work ethic by him & his team, I’ll give him that much. He's achieved a lot, in a competitive industry, with little, if any, acting training.

Not contradicting anything in yr post, tho.

Anyone who thinks a proper British accent means the person is a proper British person has a lot to learn. Most Americans though Hugh Grant was a well educated proper Englishman before he got caught getting a slob job, in his car, parked on the street, from a, how shall I say it, pute noire

R141 that someone would think to conflate education level and social standing with comportment is very strange.

[quote]Jim Parsons took much heat for leaving the Big Bang Theory (with a then annual salary of $26 million USD), but he did what while common in UK is almost unheard of in USA; an actor who left an excellent gig simply for no other reason than wanting to move on and do other work.

That does happen quite a bit with actors on successful, long running shows. At some point, an actor from the show will say, "enough" and the whole thing ends. Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles from "Supernatural" decided to end the show after 15 years. If a show is doing well, it can go on as long as the actors want to do it.

Also, to be fair, the structure of a television season in the UK is generally very different than a prime time sitcom series in the USA.

In the US, TV shows aim for a minimum of 5 seasons and it was once common to max out at 8 seasons. Also episode count is very high in general. For non-streaming shows you can end up with anywhere from 18 to 24 episodes a season. USA shows do love their "filler" episodes! Streaming shows usually go anywhere between 6 and 10-ish episodes which is closer to what you would see overseas. (Again, there are exceptions.)

Big Bang Theory ran for 12 seasons and did 24 episodes a season. The show already far exceeded what it was expected to do by any television show's standards here.

Also not only do you not have a lot of time to do work outside of the television series if you're on a prime time sitcom or even an hour long series but contracts often limit what you can do anyway. For example: Gabourey Sidibe had to leave "Difficult People" after she became a regular on "Empire" because her contract wouldn't allow her to be on both shows. While she still made appearances on other shows (such as AHS) even those were limited. As she explained FOX wouldn't let her guest on too many episodes of another series even if she wasn't the star of the series she was contracted to as a regular. (I believe she said 3-ish episodes.)

I think most people understood that it was time for Jim and the other actors to move on. They already did enough to get the show in syndication and anything beyond 8 seasons was a gift.

Grew to love Jim Parsons on TBBT, and give much props for an awkward looking out young gay man for knowing what he wanted, going after it, and becoming a success.

I mean in show where ensemble male cast were all geeks or nerds it was hard to be a stand out break away character, but Jim Parsons did it in spades.

I saw Gillian Anderson as Blanche Dubois some years ago. Her accent was so off course she sounded like Penelope Pitstop. R130, my husband told me lots of stories in confidence because his sister is still friends with many actors she trained with. I do know that almost her whole year caught crabs because one now very famous actor (in the UK) was spreading his love a bit too vigorously. Men and women. There was an actress who had a thing for sucking off all the stage technicians because it “calmed her nerves”. She is now a pretty big name in the West End and apparently still does this.

R143

Patrica Routledge said it best about leaving Keeping Up Appearances... It's far better to go when a show is on a high note than to hear people say "oh is that still on..."

Dolores Roberts apparently wasn't that happy when Ray Romano decided it was time to end "Everybody Loves Raymond". She felt there was still more for the show to do/explore, but the decision was made and final.

To one at least it does seem quality of actors in USA began declining with end of studio system. At least back in the day a studio could pick up a young truck driver named Roy Harold Scherer Jr. and groom him into "Rock Hudson". Of course studios like Warner Bros. had an entire arsenal of various coaches (acting, diction, accents, fencing, deportment, etc.. ) that smoothed off rough edges and taught even otherwise somewhat dull farm hands or whatever how to be actors.

Bette Davis hated Joan Crawford for many reasons, but one was fact she considered herself an actor. OTOH Joan Crawford and others like her were "movie stars" which just wasn't the same thing at all.

Doris Roberts, not Dolores Roberts

Peter O'Toole in "My Favorite Year". - "I AM NOT AN ACTOR, I AM A MOVIE STAR!!".

R131 - Charles II used the term "carnies"?!

Who knew?!

R145 - Oh, come now, you simply cannot do this to us!!!

In the UK, an actor can have a long, rewarding, and lucrative career, so intelligent people who graduate from top universities become actors because it's a genuinely good career option. American actors tend to have much less education and to rely on personal connections rather than education to get them into the field long enough to make their pile, because being an American actor is a very difficult and unsteady field of work, and anyone who wants to be a lifelong professional does something else.

So actors who went to Cambridge and Oxford include: Rowan Atkinson, Hughs Grant and Dancy, the Monty Pythons (Chapman had a medical degree and would act as location doctor for their film companies), Emma thompson, Ian McKellen, Rachel Weisz, Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry, Sacha Baron Cohen, etc. They've all had long and lucrative careers, many have become writers, and have kept doing interesting work through middle age and beyond, and American actors with similar life stories are as rare as hen's teeth (Streep and Weaver). When they meet up with old classmates who've become international bankers or members of Parliament, there's no feeling that they've wasted their lives or their top education, unlike the typical American actor who did some films and a TV series when they were younger, and then spends their middle age and beyond living on fan conventions and autograph sales.

R151, I can’t. I could post blind items about what I’ve been told for ages. Like some of the visiting international stars looking in on the drama students and taking their pick of the cute ones. Drama schools can be whorehouses, and drama students can be put under pressure because of favours owed and strings needing to be pulled.

[quote]There was an actress who had a thing for sucking off all the stage technicians because it “calmed her nerves”. She is now a pretty big name in the West End and apparently still does this.

The Dame has always been very caring of the staff. There's nothing worse than coming across her dentures where she put them down while delivering a 'kindness'.

R153 - All right, then, have it your way.

R154 - Thanks for the, er, tip. We'll start down the roster of Dames still treading the boards and see if we can come up with a good guess.

I'll bite:

Dench

Smith

Mirren

Atkins

Jackson (she's my best guess)

Lansbury (can she even kneel at her age?)

This is the thread in which Americans project fancy qualities on Britons.

R143

There is also a difference in way British television approaches series than Americans.

In UK once a show is green lighted cast and everyone is signed on for "X" number of episodes that make up a complete season. This way actors know when they will start a particular project, and when it ends. This gives them flexibility to plan other work elsewhere even if out of country.

OTOH American television normally does a pilot episode and maybe a few afterward; if series takes off or shows life everyone is called back to do more that will either fill out balance of season, and or for complete next.

As with all noise about Dan Stevens and others who left Downton Abbey while it was still hot shows the UK system does have drawbacks. DS and those who left simply said they did number of episodes originally contracted and maybe a bit more, but weren't interested in doing anymore. Their contracts were up so there was nothing that really could be done.

R157

It's no laughing matter; American actors and or their unions have been moaning (and taking action where necessary) against British actors arriving on these shores for stage, screen or television work for ages..... A good number of British musicals or theater works were either scrubbed or had to be recast because American actors unions protested loudly against bringing over entire "English" cast en masse.

In the very lucrative voice over market, British actors are often sought out, especially if the product, good or service is attempting to appeal to high end demographic. Then of course there is film work which again a number of British actors have been tapped to supply voices, which does not always sit well with SAG/AFTRA, etc.....

There are tons of articles all over various media about the "invasion" or whatever you want to call it of British actors in USA.

Years ago of course you had a fair share of British actors who had immigrated to USA (Cary Grant, Liz Taylor, Roddy McDowall, etc....) so studios, Broadway and whoever did have that option. As Dan Stephens and others before and still after show that traffic hasn't stopped.

[quote] …"invasion"…

I'm an Eldergay and I remember all the hundreds of complaints back in 1962 about the British Invasion. Cf; Bates, Finney, O'Toole.

Of course now that I'm leaning about film history I have found out about another 'invasion' in 1947. Cf. Kerr, Mason, Simmons, Granger, Harrison

Let's be frank, British theatre-trained actors are more efficient and better value than egotistical American models.

R160 - It's an impressive list, for sure and that's the short list, at that, but it is also true that not all British actors are theatre-trained. Many start out in local theatre groups, especially in the 1930s and 1950s, but not all of them ended up in RADA and places like it.

What they do all have behind them is a far stronger literary tradition that emphasises good story-telling - i.e., good writing and, therefore, good scripts that they can't phone in. Even actors with talent can't wrap their mouths around junk all the time and expect to build a body of work that stands up. Britons, for a very long time, have cherished particular reverence for the written word and for good writing. Americans haven't. Social media isn't improving this and I suspect this reverence is dying out in Briton, as well.

There was also more emphasis on ensemble work, even in casts with one "marquee" name. This is the "whole being greater than the sum of its parts" view that many American "stars" don't grasp. It's very much, for American actors, a "winner take all" landscape, and I think that's true of American culture as a whole these days.

For what it's worth.

^*in Britain (not Briton), as well.

You elder gays would likely know; where there any shows that either came across Atlantic that bombed because original British actor or actors weren't allowed to reprise their role(s) on Broadway. This and or were plans just simply scrapped to bring a show to USA from UK because of noise over number of or whatever British actors that would come along as well?

R155, she isn’t a Dame. Too young for that.

Of course there are American actors who've been to top universities, who've studied at the best programs and who have a deep knowledge of their craft and the history of the performing arts, and who have bachelors or MFA degrees.

Hollywood isn't interested in them, they're too old and don't have enough camera experience. If they need a well-trained actor, they'll get a Brit or an Aussie.

R165

Excuse you?

Jim Parsons just did "Boys In The Band" film and has both a BA and MFA.

[quote] British actors act… American actors pose

R54 That sounds like one of Oscar Wilde's witty aphorisms

"I believe Gordon Ramsey has also said that without the programs available in the 70s for young men in his situation he would still be in a block of flats."

Terribly sorry, but that actually seems like a good argument for NOT funding those programs.

R167, it's more like an admission that absolutely nobody on the planet is going to pay money to look at your average British actor.

How is the core curriculum in terms of stage training different between the U.K. and the U.S.? What texts and what techniques do each learn that the other doesn’t?

You're wrong.

R164 - Ah, I took the "Dame" in that next post literally.

Staunton

Scott-Thomas

Walter

Hodge

Peake

Laura Linnie is amazing, but she's no Julie Andrews.

Who's Laura Linnie?

Julie Andrews is amazing, but she's not better educated than Laura Linney.

R169 - It's a cute aphorism but in fact, beautiful people are in the minority amongst "your average ANY group of actors".

People paid often hugely to see Sean Connery, Daniel Craig as one of Connery's succesor 007s, Jude Law, Chris Hemsworth (all right, he's Australian but it's the same gene pool), Tom Hardy, Daniel Day-Lewis, Michael Caine, Colin Firth (who invaded women's dreams as the most romantic hero Austen ever created, Mr Darcy), Sean Bean, Richard Burton, Hugh Grant, Ben Kingsley, Eddie Remayne, Jeremy Irons, Alec Guiness . . .

There is no "average" UK actor, any more than there is an "average" American actor who it is assumed are all better looking . . .

If it comes to it, it must come down to more than that, because Hemsworth for all his looks (and please no one tell me you don't find him particularly attractive) has failed to open any film other than the THOR/Avengers franchise successfully.

As I said, it's a cute phrase but it doesn't hold water.

By better educated, do you mean Gayer? Then, yes.

Jeremy Irons was sex on a stick and ticked many boxes for American males and females when he burst onto scene with Brideshead Revisited. Then and now the man could stand there and recite out of the A-B-C's and give people orgasms; and or have them rushing to buy whatever he was selling.

Jeremy Irons subsequent work released in USA (Dead Ringers, Swann in Love, Lolita, The French Lieutenant's Woman, Damage, Reversal of Fortune etc..) all were well received.

Off top of my head cannot think of an American actor at the time who could have done those roles better.

I agree, R178. Jeremy's voice was beautiful, measured, authoritative and evocative.

I can't think of any American actor who can use their voice as subtlety and as well as Jeremy Irons.

Have boxed set of Brideshead Revisited and watched so many times often just pop it in to have something on in background. But Jeremy Irons narration pulls me in every time.

When BHR originally aired many gay bars (including Uncle Charlie's in the Village) would broadcast on large screen television. Guys were just mesmerized.....

Even if one didn't know Evelyn Waugh and background of Brideshead Revisited Charles Ryder had to be gay! Otherwise it would have dashed endless number of fantasies....

Ohhhh, that voice!

Someone really should start a thread on Brideshead Revisited; we're coming up on 39th anniversary of PBS/Great Performances broadcast in USA which seems like ages ago now.