Everybody’s job is hard. Most people’s jobs are thankless. And in a gloomy economy, it’s tough to feel bad for anybody who just wants to pretend to be other people for a living.

Yet despite all of this, you still have to feel a unique sympathy, even an affection, for Chicago actors.

They are the public faces of our theater scene (both when it’s thrilling and when it’s wretched), but unlike, say, Chicago professional athletes, they exist in uncelebrated anonymity and borderline poverty.

This spring, New York’s award nominations and gushing press are being justly lavished on the hardworking Chicago casts of August: Osage County and Adding Machine. But the national media attention those shows garner tends to focus more on the glory of the Chicago actor than the reality.

Chicago actors know their shots at fame (to say nothing of fortune) are slim to none. They often can’t get health insurance because they hold temporary jobs. Their work, no matter how good, is usually seen or ignored solely at the whim of a critic or two. They serve food they can’t afford to order. They live in tiny, crappy, makeshift studios so they can perform in tiny, funky, makeshift theaters. They scheme, scrape and hustle to get by. The lucky ones enjoy the support of spouses, parents or other patrons with decent day jobs.

To be honest, sometimes we wonder why the hell they stay here when there’s surely more money to be made on the coasts. But the actors who do stick around are fiercely devoted to their craft, their theaters and their city, and they’re willing to do nearly anything—from lying their butts off to living out of luggage to selling drugs—to feed their passion.

Here, eight of our favorite scrappy Chicago actors offer tips on what it takes to survive, and even thrive, in the city’s theater scene.

	Get mauled by a pit bull: Lance Baker is one of Chicago’s finest stage actors, which is why we’re happy to report a pit bull mauled his wife in 2001.
	Leave town: Chicago leading lady Hollis Resnik works constantly, but rarely in Chicago.
	Avoid the union for as long as possible: After a decade of acting, a gig at a major local theater outed the beguiling Nicole Wiesner from obscurity.
	Join the union ASAP—you might need the health insurance: Michael Patrick Thornton wasn’t about to let a little thing like quadriplegia get in the way of his art.
	Lie your ass off: What advice does veteran actor Laura Fisher have for actors starting out in Chicago? Fib like you’re Tony Rezko.
	Get paid not to act: Trista Smith’s steadiest acting gig so far was the one that paid her, for the most part, not to act.
	Be ambiguously ethnic: Monica Lopez can play Latina, Egyptian and “color blind” (that’s industry-speak for productions that cast nonwhite actors in traditionally white roles).
	Sell drugs: Let’s face it: Rich Cotovsky looks like a dude you’d expect to sell drugs. But you might not expect the drugs you’re buying from him to be your antidepressants.
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