Other forms: actors
An actor is a person who plays a character in films or on stage. A great actor, the leading actor, a character actor.
Actor is now used for both men and women, and actress is falling out of use except in award categories — which is itself argued about, since separate categories are what keeps the word alive. A character actor plays distinctive supporting parts rather than leads. In politics and economics, an actor is any party that acts: a state actor, a bad actor.
1nounactorA person who plays a character in films or on stage.
“The actor forgot his lines in the middle of the play.”
2nounpartyAny party that acts, in politics or economics.
“The report named several foreign actors behind the cyber attack.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
actor is a performer or agent.
Also accepted in games: actress
Latin actor means a doer, from agere, to do. Act, agent and agenda come from the same doing, and the theatrical sense came later than the general one.
Proto-Indo-European
*h₂eǵ-
Middle English
actour
English, today
actor
Built from
From Middle English actour. Middle English actour, from Anglo-Norman actor, Middle French actor, and their source, Latin āctor (“doer”), from agō (“to do”). Equivalent to act + or. Cognate with Ancient Greek ἄκτωρ (“leader”), from ἄγω (“lead, carry, convey, bring”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA