Task statements

  • Prepare and perform action stunts for motion picture, television, or stage productions.
  • 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.
  • Sing or dance during dramatic or comedic performances.
  • Introduce performances and performers to stimulate excitement and coordinate smooth transition of acts during events.
  • Dress in comical clown costumes and makeup, and perform comedy routines to entertain audiences.
  • Construct puppets and ventriloquist dummies, and sew accessory clothing, using hand tools and machines.
  • Perform original and stock tricks of illusion to entertain and mystify audiences, occasionally including audience members as participants.

Career and skills data: O*NET 31.0 (onetcenter.org). Figures are published survey estimates, not real-time market data.