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An artistic way to make your spare room pay: rent it out to actors
Meet the homeowners who are opening their doors to the stars of stage and screen
'Don’t put your daughter on the stage, Mrs Worthington,” goes the old Noël Coward song. People suspicious of thespian types might add: “…and don’t let actors into your home.” It is a bohemian, slightly raffish, profession of course, but isn’t that also why so many people love actors?
Lizzy McBain certainly does. She is a theatre director by profession, running a company called UnderConstruction, and knows what congenial company actors can be. “They’re good talkers, so making conversation with them is always easy, and they’re fun to be around.”
She is also one of a growing number of home owners who have made a conscious choice to take in actors as short-term lodgers. Since July, she and her partner, Nick, have been letting the spare bedroom of their Oxford home to assorted strolling players – part of the small army of actors and other theatre professionals whose work takes them around the country.
“One week, we had a Shakespearean actor in a touring production of Much Ado about Nothing. The next, it was a TV extra playing a bit part in Lewis,” says Lizzy. They used to let rooms to language students, but the actors have proved a better bet. They have ranged in age from early 20s to mid-60s, and they have all had interesting stories to tell. “There’s never a dull moment.”
Her upstairs spare bedroom is tiny, less than 10ft square. But for only £20 a night, the thespian lodgers also get breakfast thrown in. “I know what a financial struggle actors face, so I wanted to keep my rates as low as reasonably possible,” says Lizzy.
So, are there any house rules? “That’s not needed,” she says. Actors tend to tiptoe home around midnight, then lie in bed until late, so they are quite low maintenance. You don’t have to make them an elaborate cooked breakfast or anything like that. They are a pretty easy-going lot.”
Miki Jablkowska also puts up actors in her three-bedroom home in Lewisham, and the extra cash has helped pay for her PhD. “I have enjoyed meeting people and I’ve even had a stand-in actress for a major Hollywood star stay here.”
Both landladies get their bookings through Theatre Digs Booker, the brainchild of Phil Barley, a former actor. Barley was playing a candlestick in a touring production of Beauty and the Beast in 2009 when he identified a gap in the market.
“There were 60 of us in the company, we were booked to perform in 30 different venues, but in the smaller towns, there was a chronic dearth of landlords prepared to put us up. In Shrewsbury, for example, half the company had to camp in a soggy field.”
While established theatre companies, such as the Royal Shakespeare Company, tend to have their own local networks of actor-friendly landlords and rent out their own properties, there is much patchier provision in other parts of the country.
Around 8,000 theatre professionals are registered with the site, which also has around 1,000 registered hosts. The latter tend to be either older part-time landlords, perhaps empty-nesters with an unused bedroom, or young creative types needing a bit of pin money to help with the rent/mortgage.
The room rate varies, but the average is around £120 per week.
And its not just private landlords cashing in on the packed show schedule, the big theatre companies are now renting out whole blocks in which to put up their lead actors, says Miles Knowles of the property company CBRE.
“We’ve seen a rise in theatre groups looking to relocate their stars into rental apartments in the West End on long-term leases – it’s a form of corporate letting,” he says.
It is a niche market, obviously. Some towns and cities have flourishing theatres, in others, there is far less scope. And because touring productions have quite short runs at each venue, that charming actor-lodger will have left before you have got to know him properly.
But treat your lodger well, cook him a nice fry-up, and you may get some complimentary tickets to his show.
Don’t expect Dame Judi Dench or Sir Michael Gambon to turn up on your doorstep with a suitcase. The actors topping the bill are put up in hotels. But enter into the spirit, give these motley strolling players a good home for a few days and you will be tapping into a rich British subculture.
Ways to do it
Theatre Digs Booker
This website has over 1,000 landlords/landladies with a room to rent out to actors. There is currently a loft room available in Wimbledon for £35 a night (theatredigsbooker.com).
Show Digs
A rival search website with rooms to rent across the UK. It currently has rooms available in Edinburgh, Manchester and Leeds (showdigs.com).
The Royal Shakespeare Company