RephRayne

RephRayne t1_iye5h9s wrote

Reply to The Decline of British Blue Collar Stories On Screen: 25 years since NIL BY MOUTH first hit screens, Gary Oldman’s film has become a relic of a time when working-class stories were major cinematic events. What happened? by Bullingdon1973

To expand upon a point already made here.
In the UK, it used to be that "resting" actors could apply for Social Security which allowed them to not work for periods of time. This meant that actors didn't need external sources of money in order to pursue their chosen line of work.
The same applied to other forms of entertainment work, indeed the band UB40 is named after an unemployment form as all the performers were currently unemployed when the band formed.

The changing of the rules when it came to applying for Social Security meant that there were long gaps between becoming unemployed and being allowed to claim money. This stopped a lot of young working class people from pursuing the arts and shifted the demographic heavily towards those with parents able to afford to subsidise them.

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