There is a question thousands of people in Quebec type into Google every year, and almost nobody answers it honestly: is it hard to become an actor?
The answers out there are either encouragement with no data or lists of reasons to give up. Between August and September 2026, we did something else: we asked actors from here 25 questions. Not stars. Regular people, from background performers to those who make a living at it. 148 valid responses. Here is what they say.
Is it hard to become an actor?
Short answer: it isn't hard, it's opaque. Those are two completely different things, and mixing them up is exactly what makes people quit before they've even started.
Hard means there's a barrier you have to push through by force. Opaque means the door is unlocked, but nobody told you where it was.
The number that settles it:
“62% of the actors in our survey had 3 auditions or fewer in the past 12 months. 24% had zero.”
And before you assume those people don't have an agency either: among those who do, 30% got 3 auditions or fewer from their agency in a year. One in eight got zero.
So the scarcity of opportunities isn't a punishment for your lack of experience. It's the state of the market. An actor with 20 years in the business told Le Devoir in 2024: when he started, he easily had five or six auditions a year; today it's about one.
Which means something important for you: you're not starting ten years behind everyone else. You're behind on one single skill: knowing where the casting calls are, and which ones are real. That can be learned in a weekend.
The Access Plan
Your first 30 days, one action a day.
The 90-second test to spot a fake casting call, 4 emails ready to copy, a self-tape setup for under $100 and the search dashboard. 12 pages, free.
One email, not ten. Unsubscribe in one click.
Can anyone become an actor?
To get in: yes, pretty much anyone. There's no entrance exam, no professional order, no required diploma. The Union des artistes (UDA) accepts self-taught apprentice members, not just graduates of recognized schools.
To last: no. And the filter isn't the one you think. It isn't talent, it's three things:
- Consistency. 90% of respondents look for projects every week. Half of them spend more than an hour at it, all year round, often for nothing.
- Availability. It's the number one complaint from those with another job on the side. One respondent: “Auditions aren't flexible at all, so they often clash with my day job.”
- Tolerance for silence. You'll send dozens of self-tapes without ever hearing back. Another respondent: “I shoot arrows and I rarely know where they land.”
If you can live with those three things, you can do this job. If you can't, no agency, no school and no platform is going to fix that for you.
What is acting as a job, concretely?
It's a profession in the legal sense: collective agreements, negotiated minimum fees, a union, a pension plan and group insurance through the Caisse de sécurité des artistes.
Now, the part the inspirational guides leave out, and that you deserve to know before investing three years of your life:
- The median employment income of artists in Quebec in 2020 was $26,631, compared with $45,458 for other workers in cultural occupations.
- In 2016, the average income of active UDA members who reported income from UDA contracts was $21,450. That same year, 2,405 active members reported no UDA contract income at all.
- The market is shrinking: Quebec TV fiction production fell 22% in value and 27% in number of productions in 2023-2024, and production-related employment dropped 14% in one year.
Why tell you this in an article that's supposed to encourage you? Because if you go into this job thinking you're the problem, you'll destroy yourself. The problem is a tight market where access is badly distributed. You can work with that. You can't work with “I'm not good enough.”
Do you need an agency to get started?
No, and the numbers are clear. 46% of our respondents don't have an agency right now, and 28% have never had one. When we asked them where they found their last project:
| Where the last contract came from | Actors without an agency |
|---|---|
| A Facebook group | 32% |
| A friend, a contact, word of mouth | 29% |
| Casting Workbook, Backstage or another platform | 13% |
| A casting director who reached out directly | 7% |
In other words, six out of ten contracts among unrepresented actors come from two free sources.
What an agency really does: it filters for you, it has access to breakdowns that aren't public, and it negotiates. What it doesn't do: guarantee you work. On cost, 86% of those who know their rate pay a 15% commission, and 39% paid their agency more than $300 in fees over the past 12 months.
A safety rule worth writing down: when most of an agency's income comes from your sign-up fees, your mandatory classes and your portfolio rather than from your contracts, you're no longer the talent, you're the customer.
Looking for an agency is a good idea. Waiting for an agency before you start is putting your career on hold, waiting for permission from someone who doesn't even know you exist.
And the infamous UDA loop?
It's the number one frustration in the survey, far ahead of everything else: 25% of the open-ended comments mention the UDA or ACTRA. One respondent sums it up: “Most contracts require you to be a UDA member, but to become a member, you need contracts. So you're stuck in an endless loop.”
Here's how the loop actually breaks:
| Status | What it is | How you get there |
|---|---|---|
| Permit holder (permissionnaire) | Not a member. A work permit issued contract by contract | A contract with a producer who has signed a UDA agreement. The permit is cumulative |
| Apprentice member (stagiaire) | The first real membership status | Registration open to self-taught performers and graduates of recognized schools |
| Active member | Full status | 30 credits accumulated |
Three ways out that few beginners know about:
- 15 credits in one block. The UDA has opened apprentice registration to certain profiles and lets them acquire 15 of the 30 required credits in a single block.
- Experience in the regions, elsewhere in Canada or abroad can be recognized. The UDA defines a “region” as any territory more than 100 km from Montreal or Quebec City, precisely because you can work there for years without a UDA contract.
- The permit is cumulative. After 30 credits, a permit holder can, under certain conditions, apply for admission as an apprentice or active member.
The UDA represents about 13,000 artists. Not one of them was born with a membership card.
Do you have to live in Montreal?
60% of our respondents live outside Montreal: Montérégie, the Laurentians, Lanaudière, Quebec City, Laval, the Eastern Townships, Outaouais.
It's harder, let's not kid ourselves. 23% of those who didn't apply to the last casting call they saw said it was too far. But the rule of thumb most of them follow is to sort by distance, not filter by distance. The unspoken limit among our respondents is around two hours' drive for an audition that isn't guaranteed.
Why you didn't apply to the last casting call
We asked exactly that. Here are the answers, in order:
- 62%: I didn't match the profile they were looking for
- 48%: it didn't pay enough, or at all
- 32%: I didn't have time
- 23%: too far from home
- 22%: I saw the call too late
- 20%: I wasn't sure the call was legit
Take a good look at that list. Only one of those six reasons has anything to do with your talent, and even that's a stretch. The other five are solved with a template, a decision made in advance and a better way of keeping an eye on casting calls.
That's exactly what we put in a free 12-page document: the six-line profile that lets you sort a casting call in five seconds, the 90-second test against fake calls (23% of our respondents have already been caught by one), the four emails to copy, the self-tape setup for under $100, and the plan for your first 30 days, one action a day.
If you want the short version of this whole article: stop waiting for permission, and start searching as if it were a skill. Because it is one.
