Abstract
In certain artistic endeavours—such as acting in films and TV, where unemployment rates hover at around 90%—sustained productivity (simply making a living) is probably a better proxy for quantifying success than high impact. Drawing on a worldwide database, here we study the temporal profiles of activity of actors and actresses. We show that the dynamics of job assignment is well described by a “rich-get-richer” mechanism and we find that, while the percentage of a career spent active is unpredictable, such activity is clustered. Moreover, productivity tends to be higher towards the beginning of a career and there are signals preceding the most productive year. Accordingly, we propose a machine learning method which predicts with 85% accuracy whether this “annus mirabilis” has passed, or if better days are still to come. We analyse actors and actresses separately, also providing compelling evidence of gender bias in show business.
Highlights
In certain artistic endeavours—such as acting in films and TV, where unemployment rates hover at around 90%—sustained productivity is probably a better proxy for quantifying success than high impact
Drawing on the International Movie Database (IMDb), an online database of information related to films, television programs and home videos, www.imdb.com, we study the careers of millions of actors from several countries worldwide, from the birth of film in 1888 up to the present day
The total productivity of an actor’s career is found to be power-law distributed, with most actors having very few jobs, while a few of them have more than a hundred. This indicates a rich-get-richer mechanism underpinning the dynamics of job assignments, with already scarce resources being allocated in a heterogeneous way
Summary
In certain artistic endeavours—such as acting in films and TV, where unemployment rates hover at around 90%—sustained productivity ( making a living) is probably a better proxy for quantifying success than high impact. The total productivity of an actor’s career is found to be power-law distributed, with most actors having very few jobs, while a few of them have more than a hundred This indicates a rich-get-richer mechanism underpinning the dynamics of job assignments, with already scarce resources being allocated in a heterogeneous way. All of this suggests that, while activity and sustained productivity are by definition measures of performance[25], they should in this context be considered as a proxy for success. It is the continued ability to work (as opposed to prestige) that is most likely to ensure a stable career For these reasons we propose that predictions of success in show business should be focused on activity and productivity. Note that being credited on IMDb is to a certain extent funnelled by recognition mechanisms such as popularity—a producer might offer the job to the actor who had the best audition or to the one who has more followers on Instagram—so productivity is , strictly speaking, a performance-driven indicator
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