🎬 The Changing Face of Acting in Los Angeles
From James Bond daydreams to TikTok soap operas and having an A.I. film crew in your pocket: How Hollywood’s transformations are reshaping what it means to be an actor.
Los Angeles has always been a city of dreams—and of hard realities. Over the past decade, the very nature of an acting career here has been upended, sometimes for better, often for worse. But in this transformed landscape, new opportunities and unexpected pivots are reshaping the lives of performers, myself included.
Following the economic crash of 2008, as banks imploded, businesses began collapsing like dominos and the Irish state teetered on the abyss of insolvency, I spent an absurd amount of time traipsing in and out of the Galway branch of Bank of Scotland, with an ever-diminishing hope of being able to pay back any of my business loans, credit cards or overdraft.
It became a kind of grim routine: turn up every month—sometimes more often—to account for my financial situation and explain why nothing had improved since our last conversation. I’d offer sales projections, occasionally rooted in reality, bank officials would grimly note them down and allow me to keep trading for another 30 days.
As the Great Recession bit harder, each time I entered their building, I began noticing that the older, more experienced managers were disappearing. In their place came ever-younger faces, people who looked barely out of college, tasked with carrying out the work of an institution in terminal meltdown.
As the Great Recession bit harder, I was again summoned for my regular financial confession and I shuffled in expecting the usual bustle of phones ringing, busy middle-aged professionals in crisp suits purposefully striding through corridors, past rooms of animated conversations. But now the place felt eerily deserted, with darkened boardrooms and silent halls. Instead of the suited executives I’d come to recognise, there were two young women behind the desk whom I had almost mistaken for receptionists, their expressions a mix of forced seriousness and something close to simmering panic.
The more senior of the two opened with the usual routine of going through my figures—what was left in the business, how much I owed, what prospects there were (few, if any). I repeated the same dismal numbers I’d shared the time before and tried smiling.
“We are all in crisis,” I offered.
Then the other girl—surely no more than 20 years old—closed my file, looked me in the eye and said:
“The bank would like to know what is the equity in your acting.”
I stared at her, convinced I’d misheard.
“I’m sorry,” I said, “I don’t understand.”
She shifted in her seat.
“The bank wants to know what money or equity is in your acting career.”
Again, I told her I wasn’t sure what she meant.
Finally, she placed her pen on the desk, knowingly glanced at her colleague and, with a tone of near-exasperation, clarified with an example that the eejit in front of her could comprehend:
“The bank would like to know what are the chances of you being the next James Bond.”
I think I responded in a perplexed cough, realising in that moment that the Bank of Scotland—despite being in the process of spectacularly failing at the business of banking—had more faith in me becoming an international superstar than anyone else I’d ever met. To this day, they remain the most convinced supporters of my potential to headline a global blockbuster. I probably should include them in my resumé.
Fast forward to 2025 and here I am in Los Angeles (with my new demo reel ☝️), the supposed capital of the film business, trying to prove that their faith wasn’t entirely misplaced. But if the Irish recession was a crisis of confidence in the financial industry, there is something similar but different in the Hollywood air—a transformation in how the entire entertainment industry operates.
Acting has always been a precarious way to make a living. Ninety percent of the time, you operate like an army private, treading water while waiting. The other ten percent is chaos—auditions, bookings, rehearsals, racing across town to squeeze into a last-minute opportunity. You need to develop a thick skin for rejection and an even thicker one for ghosting—the practice of never hearing back at all from casting. Then again, a soldier doesn’t have to take on side-jobs to pay rent while waiting on the order to invade California (in a joke that feels less of a joke in each passing week).
Since arriving, I’m fortunate to have had multiple auditions—some for parts I would have only dreamt of getting ten years ago. Few of the “big ones” have progressed beyond that first hopeful audition as yet—and while it can be dispiriting, it’s also the reality that every actor here faces. Even in the old days of pilot season, you might audition 30 times to get a single callback. Now, I’m very glad to work on interesting ‘conceptual’ productions, which are a new way for directors to pitch ideas to producers.
But post-Covid, something fundamental has shifted. When I first started, auditions meant walking into a casting office and performing your scenes face-to-face with the people who could change your career. Now, almost everything is self-tape. You record yourself performing the apportioned scene—usually in a mini self-tape studio otherwise masquerading as your bedroom, sometimes in a rented studio—and send the file off into the ether.
There are clear upsides. You can record as many takes as you want. You can adjust the lighting, fix your hair and submit to productions anywhere in the world, whether it’s a series filming in Dublin or a movie shooting in New Mexico—all from the comfort of that bedroom. Hopefully your own.
But the competition has also multiplied. A part that once might have had 50 local candidates now has thousands of hopefuls, each submitting their best headshot, acting clip and resume—and all that before you’re fortunate enough to be included in the hundred or so invited to film an audition for the role. And if you don’t have a good agent or manager representing you, even those initial calls for submissions will likely never reach your inbox.
At the same time, the industry itself has contracted. Major film stars now take lead television roles. TV leads have slid into supporting parts. And the actors who relied on co-star credits—the bread-and-butter roles that once paid the rent—are often left with nothing.
Even if you could book steady work, Los Angeles has become staggeringly expensive. A good one-bedroom apartment averages around $2,700 a month, and that’s before you factor in the high cost of insurance, groceries, a car and the daily costs of simply existing as a sentient human in California.
Members of the SAG-AFTRA actors’ union face a particular dilemma. Commercials used to be reliable—do a couple of national spots, and you could live for a year. Now, most commercials have gone non-union. The pay is lower and protections minimal. The union itself faces an existential question: if members can’t find union work, why remain in the union at all?
This is compounded by the explosion in the much-maligned TikTok videos. Despite some still sneering at these three-minute soap operas, these vertical dramas are watched by millions of people on smartphones, within hours of going live. In reality, they’re the only productions employing actors in L.A. at scale—but (again) only if you are non-union—and the (mainly) Chinese producers have no obvious desire to change this low-cost paradigm.
But the online pivot also means it’s never been cheaper to create your own work. You don’t need a studio or a crew of 30. You can grab your phone, film an idea and have it online the same day. Of course, that means there’s plenty of mediocrity, but it also means there are no excuses left not to try. While the advent of A.I. will replace actors in many situations, I believe authenticity will still be craved by audiences in some form or other.
So, despite my challenges and having yet to become the next James Bond from County Mayo in the far west of Ireland, I’ve found superb representation and have worked with talented casting directors, producers, writers and fellow actors. And there’s something else I’m grateful for. We live in an era where I’m able to work in Ireland, Europe, or America in the same month without issue. Meanwhile, technology makes it possible to cross borders and collaborate in ways my financially-embarrassed former self could never have imagined.
So, yes, Los Angeles has changed. The industry has changed. Even the definition of what a successful acting career looks like has changed—but creative artists have access to unrealised opportunities as never before. Even one which features a smooth, secret agent in a crisp suit, who utters the immortal words:
“You’re mighty shtuff, Miss Moneypenny.”
Originally published in The Western People, July 8, 2025.