Actors and Actresses – what’s in a Job Title?

“An actress can only play a woman. I’m an actor – I can play anything.” 
Whoopi Goldberg

On enCAST we like to promote the idea that everyone should be treated and talked about equally. We feel, like many, that there should be no need to differentiate between the sexes when it comes to talking about abilities, work, skills and so on.

So we use the word actor to mean anyone who happens to be standing in front of the camera performing, regardless of what gender they are or aren’t.

Likewise we think that a cameraperson, medic, director, driver, scriptwriter, CD, MUA and so on can be anyone. We’re not really interested in their gender or the colour of their skin or their favourite Marvel Universe superhero but only if they can do the job properly.

But… because sometimes casting calls have to specify a gender, rather than use completely different terms to describe the same job we simply add male or female to the job. A bit like adding any other characteristic: tall actor; French speaking actor and so on.

By doing this it keeps things simple and does not add a load of linguistic baggage to the description.

Controversy

But we know some people disagree.

Perhaps they feel the need to include the gender of a person in their job title so they know how to approach them and deal with them.

Do they talk about writers and writeresses, farmers and farmeresses? 

And then do they form preconceptions before they meet them and treat them differently when they do?

PS, some history

Back in the Middle Ages only men tended to act and they used the word actor to describe their job. When women started joining in as well, they too used the word actor to describe their job.

But then along came the idea that English should be influenced by French and the word actrice and suddenly some linguistic types decided female actors should be called actresses.

So if you’d like an historical slant on this, just consider that we – like many other people – are simply going back to our linguistic roots with this word.