What Does an Actor Do and How Do You Build an Acting Career?

An actor performs a character for film, television, or theater, and builds a career by accumulating training, on-set experience, and professional credits over time. The path usually starts with early creative projects, moves through formal training or indie work, and eventually includes union membership and principal roles. Mark Kochanowicz's career, as described on his site, illustrates this progression: he began making short films at 12, joined the Screen Actors Guild in 2003, booked a principal role on The Wire shortly after, and later expanded into producing, directing, and cinematography.

What an Actor Actually Does

The core job is interpretation: taking a script and embodying a character so the story reads clearly to an audience. In practice, that work takes several forms.

• Principal roles — named or featured characters with substantial screen or stage time. Kochanowicz has played principal roles in film, television, and theater.
• Stand-in work — a stand-in substitutes for a lead actor during technical setup (lighting, camera blocking) so the star's time is preserved. Kochanowicz has stood in for "many of Hollywood's A-listers in dozens of movies and television shows."
• Background and smaller parts — often the entry point for new actors building set experience.

Stand-in work is worth understanding because it is not performing in the usual sense, yet it puts an actor on professional sets daily. Kochanowicz describes it as a form of education: studying established actors firsthand and learning production from directors, cinematographers, and crew.

How the Career Path Typically Unfolds

Start with whatever tools you have

Kochanowicz began making movies in Philadelphia at age 12 after a neighbor lent him an 8-mm camera for short films. The lesson generalizes: early work does not need to be professional, it needs to be finished. Short films teach blocking, continuity, and editing rhythm from the inside.

Build a base during school years

During college in the 1990s he played in indie-rock bands and graduated from Pennsylvania State University with a degree in General Arts & Sciences. Performance experience in music and theater counts as training in presence and audience awareness, even when it is not film work.

Move into professional and union work

In 2003 he joined the Screen Actors Guild and soon after booked a principal role on The Wire. Union eligibility generally comes through booked union work or qualifying non-union credits; membership then opens access to union productions and establishes wage and working-condition standards. Kochanowicz also served a two-year term on the Philadelphia SAG board during the 2012 merger that created SAG-AFTRA — a reminder that union involvement can extend beyond acting itself.

Accumulate credits across formats

A working actor's resume typically mixes film, television, and theater. Each format trains different skills: theater builds stamina and live audience control, television builds speed and consistency across takes, film builds subtlety for the close-up.

From Actor to Related Roles

Acting careers often widen rather than stay narrow. Kochanowicz's behind-the-camera work includes producing, directing, cinematography, writing, and editing. His debut feature, Assumption of Risk, won the Best Director Award at the 2015 Winter Awards, and his films have screened at more than 25 festivals. He was twice a grand prize finalist for the Greater Philadelphia Film Office's Set-In-Philadelphia screenwriting award.

The mechanism is straightforward: time on set exposes an actor to every department, and that exposure converts into transferable skills. An actor who understands lighting and editing makes better choices in front of the camera and can eventually create their own material — a common strategy when good roles are scarce.

A Practical Sequence for Building the Career

Common Sticking Points

• Treating stand-in or background work as a dead end. It is paid set education; the value depends on whether you watch and ask questions.
• Waiting for permission to create. Kochanowicz's trajectory — from a borrowed 8-mm camera to directing his own feature — shows that self-generated projects fill gaps between bookings.
• Ignoring the business side. Union board service, festival submissions, and screenwriting competitions are all part of sustaining a career, not distractions from it.

The through-line in this example is volume and variety: early shorts, college performance, union membership, principal roles, stand-in work, then producing and directing. Each step fed the next, and none required waiting for a single big break.