It’s a notion Dunedin actress Raewyn Lippert is fully aware of, and one she went to great lengths to share with drama pupils at her alma mater, Kaikorai Valley College, yesterday.
She also appeared in the critically acclaimed 2015 film Suffragette, alongside actors Helena Bonham Carter and Meryl Streep.
Ms Lippert returned to Dunedin a year ago, to spend time with family here and introduce her English husband and actor Tom Peters, and their 3-year-old son, Ethan, to her home town.
"During the course of my year back here, I was thinking about how I got a lot out of my time at Kaikorai Valley, and I wanted to use this opportunity to give something back.
"We had a careers chat, a question-and-answers session, about how to approach people for work, what sort of training is helpful, what you do to earn a living when you’re not getting acting work ... those sorts of things."
She said many aspiring actors believed the profession was a full-time job, but she shed light on the fact that it was very rare.
Actors — particularly when they first start out, have to work long hours doing jobs outside of acting, she said.
"I think programmes like X-Factor don’t necessarily help because you see people become stars overnight.‘‘In the United Kingdom, the average for an actor is to have acting work for 11 weeks of the year.
"That’s an awful lot of time having to do something else.
"I’ve done my time doing things like waiting tables and working in call centres.
"I had a boring summer job once, being a roving information point where I wore a green sash with ‘Information’ written on it.
"It was at a John Lewis store. I had to stand and wait for someone to stop and ask me where haberdashery was."
She was thankful her career had developed to a point where she no longer had to do so many of those sorts of jobs.
"These days I do a lot of drama workshops and [corporate] role-play work, which at least utilises my acting skills."
Her main advice to pupils was "be persistent, go for your dream, but at the same time, be realistic and know that a lot of your time, you may not be doing what you want to do.
"But keep going if it’s what you love."
She hoped the advice would help others follow in her footsteps.
Ms Lippert said she got her first taste of acting while she was a pupil at what was then, Kaikorai Valley High School.
She credited deputy principal John Downes (who was her English teacher at the time) with inspiring her passion for acting.
"Definitely Mr Downes’s 4th form English classes, studying things like West Side Story, excited my imagination about acting, and it wasn’t until about 6th and 7th form that I started getting involved in productions and theatre spots.
"I had a love affair with acting, and it started to consume my 7th form year. I started to become obsessed with it."
From there, she said it was pure "youthful passion and idealism" that drove her to pursue it as a career, despite her having the academic ability to become a doctor or a lawyer.
"That acting bug really bit me, and I just couldn’t put it aside really."
She left New Zealand to pursue her dream in the 1990s, studying at the Oxford School of Drama.
It seems the acting flame still flickers for Ms Lippert. She and her family will return to London next week, in the hope of rekindling her career.
Television and film were still relatively new to her, and she was keen to pursue them.
"Before I left, I was starting to pick up a bit of momentum and I was getting seen for a few more things. So I’m hoping that will pick up again."
