Over the last couple of years, it has been a very big conversation, especially amongst black commentary spaces, about why are non- black American actors are getting roles as well black Americans. This is a major difference that has been sweeping over not just Black-led films but Hollywood as a whole. Actors from the United Kingdom dominate in Hollywood for several reasons I can list, and it stems majority in the fault of Americans and how the cultures differ tremendously.
One example is again a cultural difference. In the UK, actors treat acting like a genuine art, not a career path first. Their actors attend drama schools and theater companies across Europe to train in the art of acting. I’ve been around professional stage actors myself, and the level of dedication it takes someone before they even get a chance to ever get in front of a camera can be overwhelming.
Stage acting demands extensive voice projection and a level of stamina that even some athletes don’t fully have. A cool thing I’ve personally witnessed(that 100% helps with UK actors getting roles in America) is the ability to capture different accents. UK actors spend a lot of time training in phonetics and dialects, making the transition between different accents easy, whereas here in the States, most actors don’t go through training like that since, well, we have our films being produced here already. This intense training altogether builds a strong baseline of technical skill before actors ever step in front of a camera.
Comparing the two countries, you have the UK, where acting and stage plays are still seen as a core part of culture, in which the actors go through so much training on the foundations and technical abilities in order to be a part of the art form, producing insanely talented actors along the way. So then I started to wonder, where are all the American actors coming from? Well, we do produce fewer and less actors. The death of primarily Disney live-action television shows has led to fewer and fewer actors debuting in films and television. Most actors now either go the route of doing commercials or modeling first to build a brand, then try stepping into acting.
Another comparable difference comes with the mental side of acting. Theatre as an art form cultivates collaborative thinking and mindset where everyone’s role is important, even the people not on stage, whereas many American actors, especially the biggest of stars, are placed on pedestals and served as film selling points first, more than anything.
All in all, UK actors have come in and dominated many of the big recent projects in American history for good reason. Unless there is a change that comes within American and Hollywood culture soon, these prominent issues will continue to last, and UK actors will continue building a larger and more formidable hypothetical bridge to Hollywood and dominate the film industry.
