Actors’ career trajectories :|role diversification patterns and relational dynamics in the TV-acting field in Turkey

Abstract

An important determinant of status and success in an actor’s professional life is the ability to play a great diversity of roles. Role diversification demonstrates actors’ talent, increases their status within the field, and consequently improves their social and economic conditions. A serious obstacle to achieving these is what I call “role stickiness”, where actors get repeatedly cast for certain kinds of roles. Despite the importance of role diversity and stickiness, however, little is known about the actual dynamics that shape them. In this thesis, I uncover the sociological determinants of differential role diversity levels between actors by tracing the careers of 112 actors (56 male, 56 female) working in Turkish TV-serials. I demonstrate that gender is a crucial variable in shaping role diversity levels, with female actors having significantly lower scores than their male counterparts. Education is another variable that impacts diversity scores of actors, but the returns to education are also unequal across male and female actors. Furthermore, the 21 in-depth interviews I conduct with actors and decision-makers such as agents, casting directors, directors, and producers from the field show that the lack of talent demonstration opportunities for female actors lower their meritocratic agency in shaping their career trajectories and legitimizes the advantaged positions of male actors in the field.