Mathematicians work out how to predict success in show business

I’m so glad that I’m no longer an actor. I put myself through the last two years of school and then university as a radio actor (though I did a bit of stage and TV—the latter I hated). I mostly had bit parts, advertisements and the like.

I felt it was a fun but dead-end job and now researchers have decided I was right.

As it is,  a team of mathematicians have found a way to predict whether an actor’s career has peaked or if their most successful days lie ahead.

What the researchers say: The researchers discovered that an actors’ most productive year, defined as the year with the largest number of credited jobs, is towards the beginning of their career. (I was obviously at my top between 17 and 18 and, according to this study, it was all downhill from there).

Clear signals preceding and following this ‘annus mirabilis’ enabled the researchers to predict with around 85 per cent accuracy if an actor’s peak has passed—or not.

The study, published in the journal Nature Communications, also describes how about 70% of actors and actresses have careers that only last for one year (mine lasted for about eight years—applause now please).

Using data presented by Internet Movie Database (IMDb), the researchers studied the careers of 1,512,472 actors and 896,029 actresses around the world from 1888 (when the first film was made), up to 2016, to analyze and predict success on the silver screen.

They found that careers are clustered into ‘hot’ and ‘cold’ streaks as individuals do not tend to work at a steady rate in a business where unemployment rates hover at around 90 per cent. (I’m feeling better about myself.)

There is also huge evidence of gender bias in the industry, as most of the patterns observed were different for actors and actresses.

For instance, actors are more likely to find work after a cold streak while an actress’s most productive year is more likely be at the start of their career. (Thank goodness I’m male and didn’t rely on my looks).

The researchers were inspired to investigate this after previous studies, which had analyzed the career success of scientists and artists, were found to be unpredictable (thank goodness I became a scientist). They aimed to define, quantify and predict the success of actors and actresses in terms of their ability to maintain a steady flow of jobs.

The lead author said: “Only a select few will ever be awarded an Oscar or have their hands on the walk of fame, but this is not important to the majority of actors and actresses who simply want to make a living, which is probably a better way of quantifying success in such a tough industry.” (I made a living!).

“Our results shed light on the underlying social dynamics taking place in show business and raise questions about the fairness of the system,” he added. “Our predictive model for actors is also far from the randomness that is displayed for scientists and artists.”

The researchers found that the total number of jobs in a career is underpinned by a ‘rich-get-richer’ phenomenon. In other words, the best-known actors get the most jobs (same for writers I have discovered).

This result is not unexpected, after all, the more well-known an actor is, the more likely producers will want him or her in their next film - if only for commercial purposes.

What is interesting about this observation is that ‘rich-get-richer’ effects are well known to develop out of arbitrary and unpredictable random events that get amplified. So, an actor’s success could be down to circumstance rather than their acting ability. This is known as the ‘network effect’.

The study also shows that actors with long cold streaks, who then experience late comebacks, are rare but difficult to predict and, as such, the destiny of each actor is not entirely determined.

Another author of the study said: “We think the approach and methods developed in this paper could be of interest to the film industry: for example, they could provide complementary data analytics to IMDb.”

So, what? One of the points the researchers made in this study, and which I believe to be very true, is that most people’s success is based on luck and circumstance rather than talent or knowledge. The path to riches is paved with lucky circumstances and ‘rich-get-richer’ phenomena.