The phrase "a failed actor" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used to describe someone who has attempted to pursue a career in acting but has not achieved success in that field.
Example: "After years of auditions and rejections, he reluctantly accepted the label of a failed actor."
Alternatives: "an unsuccessful actor" or "a struggling actor."
For most of his childhood, he and his father, a failed actor, barely spoke.
This particular demon was originally a failed actor from ancient Greece named Passalus, and on his sojourn in the 21st century he finds it useful to transform himself into a genteel British matron and former actress named Constance Simmons.
Equally impressive are the blank-verse monologues "Spoils," "Schnauzer" and "Tomorrow & Tomorrow," the speakers ranging from a thief cleaning out a dying man's home to a dog-owning abductor and a failed actor.
All are framed within the narrative of Joe, a failed actor who discovers he can make other people dream and who sets himself up as a kind of therapist/dream detective.
In April of 1747 friends in the city helped Garrick to raise £8,000, his share of the purchase money for the lease and furnishings of Drury Lane Theatre and renewal of the patent, in partnership with one James Lacy, a failed actor with a flair for the entertainment trade, who had been stage manager at Covent Garden.
Alan Hollinghurst's "The Spell" probes the motives and manners of four gay men whose lives interlock: an architect who fears that his appeal may be waning; his hedonistic son; a flamboyant, failed actor; and a lanky, reticent civil servant from the Foreign Office who discovers the rejuvenating effects of Ecstacy and House Music.
A salesman and failed actor, he moved to New York and began teaching public speaking at the Young Men's Christian Association.
It was to this attic room that the actor Pamela Lane, then the leading lady at the Derby rep theatre, moved following the breakdown of her tempestuous marriage to the failed actor and failing playwright John Osborne in 1954.
Scott Bakula ("Quantum Leap") is Terry, an aging playboy and failed actor who works as a temp.
Titus, an effervescently gay, black failed actor from Mississippi, pulls off every daring gag.
