Jobs / Design, media, and writing / 27-2011.00
Actors
Play parts in stage, television, radio, video, or film productions, or other settings for entertainment, information, or instruction. Interpret serious or comic role by speech, gesture, and body movement to entertain or inform audience. May dance and sing.
- US jobs
- 55,000
- Job family
- Design, media, and writing
Can agents do the work of actors?
We read the evidence at the level of the job family, Design, media, and writing:
- Task levelPartialOnly adjacent evidence. OSWorld-Verified includes tasks in image, slide, and document apps, and the best agent passes 90.2% of all its computer tasks. No task-level benchmark in our collection scores the quality of design or writing work.
- Project levelNot yetOn the Remote Labor Index, which includes graphic design, video, 3D, audio, and web projects from freelance platforms, the best agent completed 15.8% of projects to a standard a client would accept. GDPval deliverables score higher (84.9% wins or ties against professionals, reported by OpenAI), but those tasks are one-shot and fully specified.
Benchmarks for the job family
These cover work in design, media, and writing, not always this occupation's tasks.
- 1846 EloClaude Opus 5.5 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort, Default Fallback) · 23 Sep 2026Unrated
- OSWorld-Verifiedby HKU, Salesforce AI Research, Carnegie Mellon University and University of Waterloo90.2%Intelligence-Indeed Agent · 25 Jul 2026Saturated
Typical tasks
From O*NET 31.0. Core tasks first. Few of these tasks have a benchmark today.
- Attend auditions and casting calls to audition for roles.
- Work closely with directors, other actors, and playwrights to find the interpretation most suited to the role.
- Portray and interpret roles, using speech, gestures, and body movements, to entertain, inform, or instruct radio, film, television, or live audiences.
- Study and rehearse roles from scripts to interpret, learn and memorize lines, stunts, and cues as directed.
- Collaborate with other actors as part of an ensemble.
- Learn about characters in scripts and their relationships to each other to develop role interpretations.
- Perform humorous and serious interpretations of emotions, actions, and situations, using body movements, facial expressions, and gestures.
- Read from scripts or books to narrate action or to inform or entertain audiences, utilizing few or no stage props.
- Work with other crew members responsible for lighting, costumes, make-up, and props.
- Promote productions using means such as interviews about plays or movies.
- Tell jokes, perform comic dances, songs and skits, impersonate mannerisms and voices of others, contort face, and use other devices to amuse audiences.
- Write original or adapted material for dramas, comedies, puppet shows, narration, or other performances.
Other job titles for this occupation (31)
Actress · Comedian · Community Theater Actor · Entertainer · Film Actor · Motion Capture Actor · Role Player · Tour Actor · Voice Actor · Voice-Over Artist · Actor Understudy · Background Actor · Character Performer · Impersonator · Motion Picture Actor · Movie Actor · Movie Extra · Movie Star · Movie Stunt Performer · Scare Actor · Show Girl · Stunt Double · Stunt Driver · Stunt Performer · Stunt Person · Stunt Woman · Television Actor · Theatrical Performer · Theatrical Trouper · Thrill Performer · Vaudeville Actor