Can you still make a living as an actor?

Self-tapes shifted much of the cost of auditioning onto actors. Streaming changed the residual model. Seasons got shorter. Roles got smaller. And movie stars increasingly started showing up in the television roles that once represented the next rung on the ladder for working actors.

So what happened to the working-actor career?

In this episode of The Working Actor NYC Podcast, Benjamin Howes and Patrick Richwood look at how the economics of being a professional actor have changed — and whether the career model many of us have been pursuing still makes sense.

We start with self-tapes. The camera, lighting, sound, reader, recording, editing, uploading, space and TIME required to audition didn’t disappear when auditions moved out of casting offices. Much of that infrastructure simply moved onto the actor.

Then there’s what happens after you actually get the job.

We talk about the changing economics of streaming — including one fairly astonishing example of 99 episodes of a Disney Channel show continuing to generate residual checks worth literal pennies — shorter seasons creating fewer paid workdays, and Benjamin’s own experience of watching roles get downgraded from guest star to co-star.

And then there’s another change to the traditional career ladder: movie stars are now routinely doing the kind of prestige television work that working actors once hoped to graduate into.

But this isn’t an episode about Hollywood dying or actors giving up.

Because while the traditional system is getting tighter, something fascinating is happening outside it.

The box office is booming again. Independent films like “Obsession” and “Backrooms” are demonstrating that commercially valuable entertainment can originate in unexpected places before the traditional Hollywood system has given anybody permission to make it.

And that raises a much more interesting question:

If the traditional ladder is getting narrower, should actors spend all of our energy trying to climb it — or should we also be paying attention to where new ladders are being built?

Maybe the sustainable working-actor career of the next 20 years won’t look like the one we spent the last 20 years trying to build.