Actors, though intermittently celebrated, have only recently shed a scurrilous and shady reputation.

With industrialisation and mass leisure time came the opportunity for them to make money and gain some respectability. The talkies, firmly established not long before World War II, gave actors, through inspirational films, propaganda and service entertainment, the chance to reach a stature anomalous to their history.

Actors had gone from notoriety to an elite discussed in cosmic allusion in barely more than a generation.