Minor Roles

Minor Roles

I love old movies, and some not so old.  The leads form the pantheon of actors.  Tyrone Power, Clark Gable, Hedy Lamarr, Charles Laughton, Marlene Dietrich, Meryl Steep, and so many more are included. 

I always look at the end credits.  Very occasionally, you will see a budding star having a small role; occasionally or more often you will see one of the great character actors of their day.  But most of the credits go to those serving in minor roles in the film.  They are where they are, making a living, saying a few lines, and then exiting off stage – their work done. 

This is the role of most.  A few minor lines and then stage exit.  All this is on account of some odd combination of circumstance, luck, and talent. Yet, not everyone can be an important star.  But, they are in the movie.   For most, this is just not too bad.  

Very occasionally, someone comes in from the back and into the front.  It does happen; if it never did this would be quite the signal.   There is an explanation using some math.

The Square Root Rule.  It is a rule of thumb that in any population of N persons, the number of notable persons is proportional to the square root of N.  So, if there are  N = 40000 actors of all types in Hollywood, this implies there are about 200 notable actors, i.e. the big stars.  If could be anywhere from 50 to 800, for instance.  Remember, the square root law used here changes the scale, but does not give an exact value.    If N = 10000, then the number of stars is about 100.   

In brief, not everyone can be at the top; indeed relatively few in any population are at the top.  

Some actual data.  The Screen Actors Guide, from their own website, represents more than 160,000 actors, announcers, broadcasters, journalists, dancers, DJs, news writers, news editors, program hosts, puppeteers, recording artists, singers, stunt performers, voiceover artists and other media professionals. This is a much larger population than merely actors.  Taking the square root of this number gives 400, and using a 1/4 to 4 times factors, a rough estimate is that there are between 100 to 1600 big shots. 

The population of the US is about 350,000,000 citizens.  The square root of this value is about 19,000.  Consider the congress, governors, significant military leaders state legislatures, mayors of large cities- basically all those about on a par at the top echelon of power, and add all these up, you obtain a number withing the scale given the square root law. 

This is quite a handy little rule.  It is not exact by any means, but it does give some appreciation of how many can and therefore cannot be at the top.  It can be derived from a rather simple management model - to be forthcoming.