Reddit r/acting
An active online community where actors discuss craft, careers, and industry realities
Overview
Reddit's r/acting subreddit is one of the largest online forums dedicated to the acting profession, hosting candid discussions about training, auditions, agents, and the realities of building a career. Its anonymous format encourages honest and unfiltered advice.
Topics range from beginner questions about getting started to advanced discussions about contract negotiations and self-tape techniques. The community regularly features input from working actors, casting directors, and acting coaches.
How It Works
The subreddit's wiki and FAQ sections compile years of community knowledge into accessible guides covering common topics like choosing a market, finding classes, and building a resume from scratch. These resources are especially helpful for newcomers.
Reddit is completely free to use. Creating an account takes seconds, and there are no paywalls or premium tiers required to read or participate in discussions.
Who Uses It
A useful resource for getting unvarnished opinions on acting programs, headshot photographers, and career strategies. Take individual advice with a grain of salt, but the collective wisdom of the community is substantial and often remarkably insightful. The subreddit's upvote and downvote system naturally surfaces the most helpful responses and buries unhelpful or inaccurate advice, creating a self-correcting quality filter that many other forums lack. Regular AMAs and detailed career retrospectives from working professionals offer rare glimpses into the realities of the profession from people who have no financial incentive to sugarcoat their experiences.
Pricing & Plans
Reddit is entirely free to use, with no subscription required to read or participate in the r/acting community. Reddit does offer a premium subscription called Reddit Premium at approximately six dollars and ninety-nine cents per month, which removes advertisements and provides access to an exclusive lounge subreddit, but this is completely unnecessary for using r/acting. There are no paywalls, premium tiers, or hidden costs associated with the subreddit itself. The only potential cost is the time investment, as Reddit can be highly addictive and the platform is designed to encourage extended browsing sessions. Compared to every paid acting community, forum, or networking platform, the price-to-value ratio of r/acting is unbeatable since you are accessing a community of tens of thousands of actors and industry professionals for zero cost. Creating an account takes less than a minute, and you can begin reading and posting immediately without any approval process or waiting period.
Pros & Cons
What's Great
The anonymous nature of Reddit encourages brutally honest advice that you rarely find on platforms where people post under their real names and worry about professional repercussions. The community is large enough that questions are typically answered quickly, often with multiple perspectives from actors in different markets and at different career stages. The wiki and FAQ sections represent years of accumulated community knowledge, organized into accessible guides that cover nearly every common question a new or developing actor might have. The voting system effectively crowdsources quality control, pushing the most helpful and accurate responses to the top while burying misleading or unhelpful advice. Regular participation from verified industry professionals including casting directors, agents, and acting coaches adds authoritative voices to discussions that might otherwise be dominated by speculation. The platform's threading system allows for detailed, nuanced discussions that go deeper into topics than the flat comment structures of Facebook groups or Instagram comments.
What Could Be Better
The anonymous format that enables honesty also enables trolling, and some users post deliberately discouraging or cynical responses that can be demoralizing for actors seeking genuine support. Advice quality varies dramatically between posts, and a confident-sounding response from an anonymous user may come from someone with no actual industry experience or knowledge. The subreddit skews toward early-career actors and beginners, which means advanced discussions about negotiating contracts, managing agents, or navigating studio politics are less common than basic questions about getting started. Reddit's general culture can be blunt to the point of harshness, and actors seeking emotional support or encouragement may find the environment less nurturing than dedicated acting communities. Location-specific advice is difficult to rely on, as respondents may not specify which market they work in, and advice that is accurate for Los Angeles may be misleading for someone in Atlanta or London. The platform offers no direct networking functionality, meaning you cannot connect with other professionals, share materials, or build lasting relationships the way you can on industry-specific platforms.
Our Recommendation
Reddit r/acting is recommended for actors who want access to candid, unfiltered opinions about the business side of the profession and who are comfortable evaluating anonymous advice critically. It is especially valuable for actors in the research and exploration phase of their careers who need to gather diverse perspectives before making decisions about training programs, headshot photographers, or market selection. Working actors who are well-established in their careers will find less value in the subreddit, as the majority of discussions are geared toward beginners and early-career performers. If you are someone who is easily discouraged by negative or blunt feedback, you may want to limit your exposure to the subreddit during vulnerable periods. For structured professional networking and casting access, dedicated platforms like Actors Access, Backstage, or IMDbPro are essential tools that Reddit cannot replace. The subreddit works best as a supplementary research tool rather than a primary career resource.
Pro Tips
Read the subreddit's wiki and FAQ thoroughly before posting, as moderators and community members will redirect you to existing resources if you ask a question that has been answered extensively in previous discussions. Use the search function to find threads about your specific market, training program, or career question, as years of archived discussions likely contain relevant insights. When posting questions, include specific details about your location, experience level, and goals to receive the most tailored and useful responses. Create a separate Reddit account for acting-related discussions if you prefer to keep your acting identity separate from your personal Reddit activity. Sort by top posts of all time to find the most upvoted and broadly useful threads, which often contain career-defining advice and perspective shifts. Engage respectfully with advice you disagree with rather than dismissing it defensively, as the most uncomfortable truths on r/acting are often the most valuable ones to hear.