Aspiring actors are often cautioned by those currently working in the field: if you can see yourself doing anything else, do it. The subtext suggests pursuit of an acting career is only for those who possess a deep desire, perhaps even an elemental need, to perform. In fact, many performers truly cannot see themselves doing anything else; they are intrinsically motivated. This dissertation investigates the experiences of professional actors who possess such motivation, colloquially labeled the acting bug, which is a phenomenon rooted in notions of identity---when, why, and how people identify themselves as performers, and the effects of that self-identification on future choices.

Existing literature characterizes the acting profession as stressful and volatile, identifying disparities among job training, availability, and stability in the arts; yet some arts education programs gloss over inevitable future challenges, adopting instead a follow-your-dreams rhetoric that fails to outline difficult truths about a professional life in the arts. While not all actors experience the acting bug in relation to educational factors, established research indicates the propriety of holistic considerations of the role of work in people's lives. One simply cannot investigate career choice without contemplating influential personal and societal factors; therefore, this dissertation includes acute conscientiousness of possible educational intersections, since more nuanced understandings of the relationship between student identity and future choices could instigate a reevaluation of best practices in order to better prepare students for future artistic work.

For a group so present in the public eye, professional actors' voices are noticeably absent across academia; but rich experiential data from a diverse group of professional actors could provide new insight into responsible inspiration---fostering passion for the arts while heightening awareness of occupational possibilities. Through an arts-based phenomenological research paradigm, this study aims to present such data as a means of promoting understanding of a shared, lived phenomenon, championing actors' voices in formal research settings, inciting conversation, activating future research, and (ideally) generating strategies to challenge the perpetual stereotype of the starving artist.