"There's only two givens with choosing acting as a profession: one is you will always be unemployed, always, and it doesn't matter how much money you make, you're still always going to be unemployed; and that you have no power"

Frances McDormand distills the actor’s life into two hard truths: the work is intermittent by nature, and the individual wielding the performance is rarely the one holding the levers. Unemployment isn’t a failure state in acting; it’s the baseline. Jobs arrive as finite bursts of intensity surrounded by long stretches of waiting, auditioning, training, and being evaluated. The paradox is that even extraordinary success does not convert that rhythm into stability. A blockbuster, an award, a celebrity profile, none abolish the gaps between gigs or the uncertainty that the next role will materialize. Money softens the edges but doesn’t change the structure.

The second certainty names the real hierarchy. Actors may be the most visible people on set, but creative and economic power typically resides elsewhere: financiers choose, producers replace, studios cut, algorithms sort, audiences drift. Being “chosen” is the engine of employment, and being chosen is not something one controls. Notes, edits, market demands, brand calculus, these forces can redefine a performance after the performance is over. Even stars have leverage only in narrow, negotiated windows, and it evaporates quickly when a project underperforms or tastes shift.

There’s an implied survival strategy here: accept the givens to reclaim what is actually available. Control the craft, the preparation, the ethics, the boundaries. Treat downtime as part of the job rather than an indictment of worth. Build community, not just contacts. Unions, collective bargaining, and ensemble-minded collaboration are partial antidotes to powerlessness; generating work, writing, producing, forming companies, can create pockets of autonomy, though even these live inside larger market currents.

The measure of success becomes endurance, curiosity, and the capacity to keep choosing the work when the work does not choose you. That reframing transforms precarity from a personal shortcoming into a structural reality, and turns clarity into resilience rather than cynicism.