Most Canadian actors earn less than $20K per year from screen work, survey finds

TORONTO – Most Canadian actors can’t pay the bills through onscreen work alone, according to a survey from the Canada Media Fund that found seven in 10 respondents earned less than $20,000 a year from their work on film and TV.

The poll of nearly a thousand screen performers also found only six per cent of respondents earned more than $75,000 per year, and just 13 per cent earned all their income from performing.

Two-thirds of respondents made less than half their money through acting, the Canada Media Fund said. The survey was conducted at the end of 2025 by Abacus Data, and asked performers to reflect on their earnings the year prior. 

“People have to find other jobs, and really make ends meet in different ways … to make their careers sustainable,” said Diego Briceño, senior manager of data equity at the Canada Media Fund, who presented the report on Tuesday at the Reelworld Summit in downtown Toronto.

“So (it’s) really a difficult situation in terms of economics and stability for them.”

The respondents suggested much of the work comes from international productions shot in Canada, including the filming hubs of Toronto and Vancouver.

Asked to reflect on their 2024 earnings, 47 per cent of said they worked on international or U.S. productions filmed north of the border, while 40 per cent worked on Canadian scripted TV and 35 per cent worked in Canadian film.

One possible solution the report presents is building up a more robust “star system” in Canada — one that promotes the visibility of homegrown actors.

The survey found only three per cent of English performers said there’s a “strong and consistent” star system in Canada, compared to 21 per cent of French-speaking performers.

That topic was also up for discussion at Reelworld on Tuesday, which included a panel on English Canada’s lack of infrastructure that boosts actors’ name recognition. 

Among the participants was K.C. Collins, who stars as deputy Crown attorney Theo Forrester on “Law & Order Toronto: Criminal Intent.” He said that show does a great job getting its stars out there — which, in his estimation, helps explain why it’s such a success.

But he said his experience hasn’t always been so positive.

“I was crafted in Canada, but I was not promoted by Canada,” he said.

Collins said that whenever he finishes a project in Canada, it’s like he’s starting his career from zero. When he works in the United States, he said, producers and directors remember working with him and want to cast him again.

Actress and producer Tonya Williams, who founded the Reelworld Screen Institute in 2000, said the Canadian system generally doesn’t celebrate stars until they “make it” in the United States.

She said she’s noticed a reticence to build up Canadians’ star power at home. 

“In my 50 years working in this industry, 50 years of listening to producers and people behind the scenes say they do not want a star system in Canada: silly excuses like, ‘Oh, they’ll start charging us more for their fees. They’ll go international,'” she said during the panel.

“Yes, you want the stars you built here to go international, that’s how it works. And what do you care if they charge more, they’re gonna make you more money. So I don’t really understand the mentality around it, but we have built an infrastructure that really supports the directors and the producers and a lot of other people within the industry, but it’s very little support for the actors.”

The Canada Media Fund is a public-private partnership that finances Canadian content and promotes the country’s screen industry. Its survey was conducted online in the last two months of 2025, and results were not weighted to reflect the broader Canadian population.

The report notes that 2024 may have been an “atypical” year because the American actors’ union, SAG-AFTRA, went on strike in 2023, pausing some U.S. productions. 

The strike ended that same fall and production picked up soon after, but a report from production intelligence company ProdPro found that in 2024 the U.S. industry still lagged behind 2022’s pre-strike activity by about 11 per cent. 

Even in the United States, where actors are generally more celebrated, it can be tough to find steady work. 

The actor Asia Kate Dillon, whose credits include “John Wick 3,” “Orange is the New Black” and “Billions,” recently announced they were looking for work in the service industry.

In an Instagram post, Dillon said they’d acted full-time since 2015, but work has dried up for them — along with “many, many other” non-binary and gender non-conforming actors. 

Other performers, including Heather Matarazzo and Jack Haven, have publicly appealed for acting work so they could make the minimum US$28,090 needed to qualify for SAG-AFTRA health insurance.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 21, 2026.