I guess there is an expectation that everyone who appears on TV or in the movies is a millionaire or very well to do. This perception hasn't changed very much in the last 60 years. All of the attention Owens has received reminded me of when actress Gene Tierney was photographed working as a sales clerk in a department store in Kansas which was circulated in Life Magazine. After being one of Hollywood's premier leading ladies during the 1940's and early 1950's earning an Oscar nomination for Best Actress in Leave Her to Heaven, she suffered a bout of mental illness and working in a department store was part of her therapy. Tierney would eventually return to Hollywood in the 1960's working as a character actress before retiring altogether by the end of the decade save for a single role in the NBC mini-series Scruples with Lindsay Wagner.
The reality is that "working actors" don't work regularly and if they do it isn't for very much money. If there is money to be made it is in commercials. You've got to make a living somehow.
Of course, there are occupations people tend to look down upon - grocery store clerks, janitors, file clerks. These positions seldom lead to upward mobility and I've had more than my share of attorneys look at me as if I worked in an amusement park. It makes living with trying to make a living that much harder. Politicians and those who aspire to public office speaking of working people, but in reality they look at working people with contempt except when it comes time to get votes.
Being wealthy, having power or otherwise having good fortune doesn't make you better than everybody else let alone make you a good human being.
With that, I hope Geoffrey Owens is offered some lucrative acting work.
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