The non-professional actor in European cinema

This chapter explores the figure of the non-professional actor in European cinema through the instances of early Soviet cinema and Italian neorealism, two highly influential periods when it comes to the casting and theorization of the non-professional actor in fiction film. Divided into three parts, the chapter first sets out to define the term ‘non-professional actor’ by situating it in a context of similarly elusive terms frequently used throughout history to describe untrained film performers.The definition offered in the first section serves as the foundation for the dis- cussion of the non-professional actor in the contexts of early Soviet cinema and Italian neoreal- ism, presented in sections two and three, respectively.