Following a 15-year trend, ethnic minority performers made incremental gains over the past two years, although mostly represented in supporting roles, according to the latest casting data collected and analyzed for 2005 and 2006. Casting data for women and senior performers has remained relatively unchanged.
“With the public continuing to demand full inclusion in film and television programming, we are proud to be a leading voice in the industry,” SAG President Alan Rosenberg said. “While we are also pleased to announce the largest percentage share for ethnic minorities to date, we cannot be content with the current levels of representation in each category, as they do not reflect the current demographics of our country. We will continue to insist on greater access to employment opportunities and accurate depictions of the American Scene.”
Although the casting data shows the highest ethnic minority representation on record, most ethnic groups were down a fraction of a percent in proportion to total roles, while the number of actors classified as “Unknown/Other” grew from 2.1 percent in 2005 to 3.3 percent in 2006. (Currently, the ethnic categories included in the casting data reports are African American, Latino/Hispanic, Asian Pacific Islander, Native American Indian and Caucasian.)
It would be impossible to determine whether the reduction in the ethnic minority group representations are attributed to performers classified by producers as “Unknown/Other” versus an actual drop in the ethnic group’s proportion to all roles. With the significant rise in the percentage of performers who are perceived to be “Unknown/Other,” however, it can be reasonably concluded that this increase is due to the growing number of actors who would identify themselves as being part of ethnic groups not listed in the casting data, such as South Asian or Middle Eastern, as well as those who would identify as multi-racial.
Role distribution by gender continues the well-established patterns of prior years, whereby males garnered the lion’s share of roles. With regard to age, previous casting trends prevail, with a majority of roles going to actors under the age of 40. The nexus of gender and age creates an enormous impact on female performers over the age of 40 as their employment rates fall substantially compared to male counterparts over the age of 40. For example, the percentage of men over 40 account for 40 percent of all roles for men, whereas women over the age of 40 make up only 26 percent of all roles for women.
“Screen Actors Guild’s longstanding commitment to accurately reflect the American Scene is exemplified in iActor, an invaluable database of our members that can eliminate rationalizations for exclusion by giving the employers the tools they need to identify individuals who have historically been underrepresented,” Rosenberg said. “The serious lack of women over the age of 40 is only one indicator that while we may be getting closer to reaching our goal of a truly representative film and television landscape, it is time for all industry stake-holders to help make it happen now and not generations from now.”
To view a detailed press release on the latest findings and all Casting Data Report charts, please visit www.sag.org.
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