Peter Davison’s Survival Guide for Today’s Actors

By June Ramli

Peter Davison has spent around fifty years as a working actor, but he still talks about his career as if he somehow slipped through a side door and never quite got caught.
“My feeling about it is that I’ve got away with it for 50 years, you know, and that’s that’s pretty good going, I think, to you know, get away with it for that long,” he says.
It’s a typically self-deprecating line, but behind it lies a very clear-eyed understanding of how precarious acting can be – especially financially.
Speaking to DailyStraits.com, these days Davison spends less time basking in nostalgia and more time warning younger performers about money, rejection and the need for a backup plan.

He knows something about uncertainty. As a teenager, he floundered in the classroom.
“I was led into acting through my failings at the academic side of school life, really. When it came to the what they call GCS over here, I ended up failing all but one, and so I had to look around for something else to do. I wasn’t going to get enough qualifications to go to university,” he recalls.
On the suggestion of a drama teacher, he joined a drama club, enjoyed it, and eventually tried for drama school.
“I had a go at getting into Central School of Speech and Drama, and I got in miraculously. I was just, I was as surprised as anyone was, and so I drifted into it. I didn’t really had great ambition.”
Work followed, but it wasn’t a straight, secure line. After a couple of years, the roles dried up long enough for him to consider walking away.
“There was one moment when I was out of work after about two years in the business where I got a job in the local tax office, and I had no prospect of work at that particular moment, and so I decided that maybe I should, you know, actually, become a civil servant,” he says.
In the end, an acting job came along, and he chose to go back. His short-lived taste of stability ended abruptly: “In fact, I lied about the exams I got to get into the temporary job at the tax office, so I was found out. So then I just went back to acting…”
That brush with a “normal” job seems to have sharpened his sense that acting alone is rarely enough to live on. When asked what advice he has for today’s performers trying to build a career, Davison doesn’t romanticise the business.

“Rejection is 90% 95% of an actor’s life”

Before he gets to money, he wants young actors to understand rejection – and how little it usually has to do with their ability.
“The thing about rejection is what young actors, anyone coming into the business, have to understand is it’s rarely about how good you are, you can be really good in a scene in a self tape that you do, but if you don’t match what the producer or director has in their head, you might be too short, you might be too tall, you might be too fat, you might be too thin.
If you don’t match up with the person, if it’s in a relationship with the size or the look of the other person they’ve cast, then you won’t, you won’t get the part. It’s just, it’s just simple as that. It’s rarely about how good you are…”
He’s seen actors walk out of auditions convinced they’ve nailed it.
“I know actors who’ve gone up for parts, and thought I really cracked out. I’m really going to get it.
That, to me, is not a good frame of mind to have, because the overwhelming likelihood, when you do a self tape, especially nowadays, or an audition, face-to-face audition, is that you won’t get the part, you know.”
The numbers he puts on it are stark.
“So that’s what you have to accept the chances of you getting any job you go for are slim… you can’t be bothered, you can’t get depressed about rejection, because rejection is 90% 95% of an actor’s life.”
Against that backdrop, Davison’s core piece of financial advice makes ruthless sense.

“You need what they call a side hustle”

Now in a position to watch his own children try to make a living in the arts, his thinking has hardened.
“Well, I think, I think nowadays I’m coming to believe I have two sons who are both actors, I had a daughter who was an actress until she married well, and so I would say it’s, it’s difficult to know, to know what to do about the financial side,” he admits.
What he does know is that relying on acting alone is a dangerous strategy.
“I think, what you need now, actors, is you need what they call a side hustle.
You need to have another job that you can do, preferably semi-skilled job that you can do when you’re not working.”
Crucially, he doesn’t mean office temping or social-media work. He’s thinking about jobs that exist far away from cameras, agents and algorithms – and he explicitly links this to the rise of artificial intelligence.
“So, I think it should be something that is a hands-on thing, something that will be unaffected by AI, shall we say. I don’t know how AI is going to affect everything, but so I can train my son. He mocks me for this, you know. I think you should train to be a plumber. Plumber, these are the ones I come up with: plumber, bricklayer, and plasterer.
Any of those jobs, if you just perfect those, you can just, when you’re not working, you can go off and earn money, and you can help support yourself, but you haven’t given up your acting life.”
For Davison, that second identity is no longer optional.
“So, I think, yes, the way to do it, you need two jobs now as an actor to survive, unless you’re very successful.
”It’s a bracing message from someone whose own career looks, from the outside, like an unbroken run of successes – All Creatures Great and Small, Doctor Who, and countless television roles. Inside that, Davison keeps returning to luck, timing and the simple fact that “jobs would come at me” in a way they no longer do for most.

A creative life – if you can afford it

Despite the talk of rejection and side hustles, Davison hasn’t grown bitter about the work itself. He still believes acting can be a deeply satisfying way to spend a life, even if global fame never arrives.
“If you’re enjoying what you do, whether it’s something you know that your friends do or you do on your own, a lot of actors now filming little short scenes or short short film, 15 minute films, if you enjoy that and you can survive financially, then then go for it, but it’s a rewarding life, even if you know, even if the thing that you’re making doesn’t make the world go wild, it’s still, it’s still a good, a good life, it’s a creative life, which is I always think really important,” he says.
That “if you can survive financially” is the hinge of his entire argument. Follow the work you love, he suggests. Make the short films, take the small parts, accept that most auditions won’t go your way. But don’t ignore the rent. Don’t assume passion will pay the bills.
In other words: by all means try to “get away with it” as long as he has – just make sure you’ve got a wrench, a trowel or a second trade in your back pocket when the phone stops ringing.

Davison is part of the much-loved classics of Doctor Who return, bringing back all 26 seasons and a feature film for Whovians old and new to enjoy. This classic collection chronicles the time-travelling adventures of the original eight legendary Doctors. Teleporting in the iconic TARDIS, a seemingly ordinary blue police box that unlocks the entire universe, the Doctors journey through time and space on marvellous adventures. Across history, future worlds, and distant alien civilisations, the Doctors and their companions confront terrifying enemies, unravel extraordinary cosmic mysteries, and battle to save entire worlds from destruction. Returning to BritBox from June 10th, 2026, the classic Doctor Who collection is streaming now at BritBox.

Starring William Hartnell (Escape, Carry On Sergeant), Patrick Troughton (The Omen, The Phantom of the Opera), Jon Pertwee (Carry On Cleo, The House That Dripped Blood), Tom Baker (Nicholas and Alexandra, Monarch of the Glen), Peter Davison (The Last Detective, The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot), Colin Baker (The Stranger, The Moonstone), Sylvester McCoy (The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug), and Paul McGann (The Three Musketeers, Queen of the Damned)