What is the difference between a star and a jobbing actor?

Luck.

Somewhere on the road to where they are they got that lucky break.

I know an actor who was cast in a TV series that made them into a star. 

That actor was cast in the TV series because they were seen in something else, a very obscure BBC production hidden in the schedules and only shown once. 

The writer of that something else told me that when casting that role it was down to two actors. He and the director just could not make up their minds and in the end, cast the actor who would become a star because they thought the character he would be playing would have the same hair colouring. 

Now if that is not luck I don't know what is. 

Few stars I have worked with ever admit this. Derek Jacobi did. He was well down the list for I CLAUDIUS, lots of other actors having turned it down and told me that if he had not been cast in that role he would today be just a jobbing actor. He said that was his lucky break. 

Derek is in my view one of the greatest stage actors I have ever seen but over the last 48 years, I have been in the industry some of the best stage actors I have seen or worked with really struggle to make a living because they never had that lucky break. Most theatre as those who perform in it know full well does not pay a decent wage, unless you are doing it 52 weeks of the year. 

Therefore please try to treat that actor who has just sent you their CV or comes up to at a networking event well and with respect, because they are a star, a very big star, waiting for that lucky break.

This is why my regular London networking events have more actors than directors, producers, writers, sales agents, film financiers, etc. They are all stars in the waiting. 

(Also I co-host them with the actor Toby Osmond).