Our arts industry, like our country, is class-ridden. And yet to talk about class is often seen as a throwback. For decades, politicians have been trying to tell us that class doesn’t exist, possibly in the hope that we’d all conveniently stop looking at the unequal ways in which the UK’s wealth continues to be distributed. What does it mean to be “working class” anyway? And how do we fairly and authentically measure that? Only once have I been asked on an equal opportunities form at a theatre to self-identify as being from a particular class. It sparked a great conversation among the cast. Norah and I prevaricated, feeling we couldn’t possibly call ourselves working class after literally throwing a ball around all morning in a beautiful rehearsal room and getting paid for it. Mike was clear. You remain the class you’re born into, however dramatically your life circumstances alter. A person born into great wealth and privilege doesn’t suddenly become working class if they’re cast adrift from that privilege and through necessity becomes a window cleaner. A person born into poverty who becomes successful and rich doesn’t become middle or upper class. Class is about so much more than how much you earn, which school you went to, what job you do, the accent you have. And importantly, Mike added, if success automatically makes you middle class, then who will the young working class look to for inspiration? To be identifiable as being working class means you can proudly advocate for the next generation of artists from similar backgrounds. I wasn’t really aware of class until I went to study at Lamda in 1988. There, I started to mix with people from a wider range of backgrounds than was available to me in the small, industrial, northern town I called home, where the spectrum of wealth was fairly narrow. My brother Dave was the first in our family ever to go to university, and by the time I got into drama school he had already graduated from Oxford, so he was well-placed to prepare me for the culture shock I had in store. I remember him saying that he felt I had a strong sense of my identity as a woman – committed feminist that I already was – but had I ever considered myself as working class? I hadn’t. My understanding of class was a Victorian model of toffs and chimney sweeps. We had a fridge and a car and enough food, so I didn’t feel “working class” at all. I’d already received a full grant to pay my fees and my rent in London for the three years of study. (There were systems in place to support young people from lower-income families back then, and all of us from our course at Accrington College had re-auditioned for a panel of civil servants at Preston town hall, and had been successfully awarded the discretionary funds we needed to do our conservatoire training. None of my peers came from backgrounds wealthy enough to have their parents pay.) Suddenly at Lamda I was studying alongside the alumni of Eton and Harrow, the children of judges and diplomats and Oscar-winning film stars who lived in mansions in South Kensington. It was a huge culture shock, and I was a massive pain in the arse for a long time, developing the ubiquitous chip on my shoulder almost instantly, as well as being in the thrall of this group of what I felt were Brideshead Revisited-style sophisticates. But there were working-class northerners on the staff, and the principal and vice-principal had been big names at the Royal Court theatre at the height of the “Angry Young Man” period, so I never felt excluded or unseen. It was a different story for the one black, working-class woman in my year of 17 white men (plus an American of Latino heritage) and six women. It’s well documented how ill-equipped drama schools have historically been in their inclusivity of people from the global majority – and Andrea had the hardest time of us all. Because where class intersects with other oppressions (gender, race, sexuality, disability) there will always be a greater struggle. There’s now growing recognition that artistic institutions need to do more to encourage and provide support to people in an industry rigged against those who have no independent financial support. From unpaid internships and theatre work, prohibitive student loans and lack of childcare, to the assumption that people have time to prepare multiple audition self-tapes as though no one has to work other jobs to live. Then there are Spotlight fees, travel costs, union membership … The systems that existed for me as a young person (even in Thatcher’s Britain) were dismantled long ago: from student grants to a benefits system that enabled people to gain experience in low-paid or unpaid settings without fear of sanctions. My years after drama school were spent building, co-running and working at Arts Threshold theatre, totally unpaid, and this was the “apprenticeship” that kicked off my career as an actor, made possible by income support and housing benefit. I’ve paid this back a hundredfold in tax since. I believe that’s how a healthy and fair society works. I am a supporter of universal basic income: £9,000 a year for every citizen (with higher earners taxed at 100% unless they give it away) would end the Kafkaesque welfare nightmare for people, and would particularly benefit people in the cultural industries. It would mean more flexibility around taking zero-hours contracts (which feel like a sad inevitability moving forward), the opportunity to retrain, and increased independence and freedom for people from disadvantaged and working-class backgrounds in particular. Class remains a factor in casting, too. I’ve known actors completely reinvent themselves in order to assimilate and break into the next level of an industry that still (with a few notable exceptions) pigeonholes us because of our regional accents. I’ve noticed that my thick east Lancashire accent lends itself to being cast in “respectable working-class” roles – nurses, teachers, etc – but rarely doctors or lawyers. Actors with other accents fare even worse. Need someone to play a sex worker or drug addict? Get a Scouser in. Someone thick as pigshit? Brummies, Bristolians, take your pick. RP is still the go-to accent to indicate good education, sophistication, professionalism, as if no one from outside a certain class possesses any of these qualities. Although people with distinctive regional dialects and accents occupy all types of jobs, from QCs to surgeons to posties and cleaners, we’re still using accent as an indicator of class – in television in particular. And this preposterous, lazy and offensive template gets worse, of course, if you are black. I do still think it would be a bit ridiculous for me to claim to be working class now. Every area of my life, from the wide variety of people I’m lucky to mix with, to the fact I own my own home, from my healthy income to the cultural capital my family enjoys, with our theatre trips and art-gallery visits, screams elitism. But my background (and, yes, my accent) means I’m identifiable as being from a northern, working-class background – one I’m proud of, one that influences still the way I’m cast, and one that I hope can inspire people who look and talk and think like me, who come from similar communities, to feel that a life in the arts is for the likes of them. Class, make no mistake, exists in our society, as much, if not more, than it ever did. Acknowledging these divisions and inequalities is the first step towards combating lack of access to the arts in working-class communities. If we’re not careful, we’ll end up with a cultural sector populated solely by the top stratum of society, who will decide which stories are worthy of being told – and how. If you believe, as I do, that art is a way of telling stories that make sense of our lives, our society, our communities, then we all need a stake in that. Currently it’s harder than it has ever been to succeed in an industry that’s class-ridden and weighted against anyone who doesn’t have the existing networks to get through the door in the first place. The arts are not a playground for the wealthy and privileged, but a necessity. We must protect our training, our students, our workforce, and ensure that all of us have a stake in our cultural institutions, wherever we’re from, and however much we have. This is the only way to have a healthy, richly textured, diverse and equal artistic community. And as a bonus, we’ll be a few steps closer to a healthy, richly textured, diverse and equal society, too. This is an edited extract from An Actor’s Alphabet by Julie Hesmondhalgh, published by Nick Hern Books.