Category: actors

AI Actors Like Tilly Norwood Threaten to Decimate Hollywood — Here’s How We Resist and Reclaim Our Future

Particle6’s Tilly Norwood isn’t a breakthrough. She’s a warning. Replace actors, and you erase crews, designers, writers, sets — the entire ecosystem. #HollywoodResists

We Don’t Fall in Love With Artificial

— A Manifesto for the Human in the Age of Synthetic Storytelling

Paul Russell

“Oh, I just love them!
Aren’t they both wonderful in everything they do?”

Two friends, chatting over coffee, might be talking about Julia Roberts, Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks — actors whose names carry warmth, history, and trust. We know them not just for their performances, but for their humanity: their stumbles, their resilience, their laughter, the way time etches itself into their work.

We love Julia Roberts not just because of her laugh on screen, but because it feels like hers — idiosyncratic, slightly unpolished, impossible to replicate. We love Tom Hanks not because he plays “everyman” perfectly, but because his particular humanity makes us believe him.

Truth: we don’t fall in love with perfection. We fall in love with the authentic.

The Threat: Tilly Norwood & Particle6

Now imagine the same conversation in a world where the “them” is not about a living, breathing person — but an AI-generated actor. A synthetic, digital human-like form designed by code in a lab, programmed for flawlessness, executing pathos at the click of a keyboard.

We can conjure an AI actor who laughs like Julia, commands authority like Streep, or exudes empathy like Hanks. To our eyes and ears, the differences between authentic and artificial blur. But beneath the surface, there is a hollowness.

The “performance” has no lived experience: no childhood memory, no heartbreak, no human carrying decades of history.

Instead, “them” (it) is Tilly Norwood, an AI-generated “actress,” created by Particle6 Studios and its virtual-talent factory, Xicoia.

Particle6 and Xicoia have already seeded Tilly across TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube — a carefully engineered avatar designed to be “castable, directable, available on demand.” The next headline: she will be the first AI model signed by a Hollywood agency.

The sales pitch: She’ll never age, never demand pay parity, never need a break. Her directors will face no scheduling nightmares, no on-set disagreements.

This is not some “what if” scenario. This is happening. Studios are taking the bait. Agencies smell commission checks. Journalists frame it as innovation.

But peel back the hype and the cracks show:

  • The uncanny valley remains. She moves, but with the eerie dissonance of something that almost passes as real.
  • The “signing” is a publicity stunt, normalizing the idea that an algorithm deserves a place on the same rosters as living artists.
  • Once entrenched, this “experiment” becomes precedent — quietly, irreversibly.

What We Stand to Lose

Remove the living actor and the collapse doesn’t stop there. The loss ripples:

  • Actors: the heartbeat of story, replaced by motion-capture shells and synthetic faces.
  • Designers, makeup, and wardrobe: no longer needed if costumes are rendered in code.
  • Crew and craftspeople: grips, lighting teams, carpenters, scenic artists, craft services — entire professions vanish.
  • Casting directors and agents: bypassed by machine-generated “talent.”
  • Directors and writers: reduced to prompters and data wranglers.

“The entire ecosystem — from truck drivers to wig makers — is tied to the human presence of performers. Strip that out, and the scaffolding collapses.”

This isn’t just about actors. It’s about an industry gutted at its core.

When AI Mimics the Soul

I’ve lived this terror personally.

I wrote Wicked Journeys — a story seeded in my life: a 19-year-old actor with HIV drifting between theater, love, loss. It carried me from 2002 to 2016 when a publisher expressed interest in bringing my first novel to the public.

Recently, I fed its premise into AI: “Write the story.” What came back was a hollow ghost. The form was there. My voice and heart? Gone.

“The AI imitated the journey but the humor, soul, and relationships of the characters didn’t have the energy and drive to carry the story.”

AI technology can mimic creativity but fails to imagine organically. Without the wonder of imagination, there is no heart, no life.

The Questions That Haunt

  • If every performance can be synthesized, what remains for human artists?
  • Will we be reduced to administrators of our own erasure?
  • How do we feed ourselves when our livelihoods are replaced by algorithms?
  • What kind of world do we leave behind when all art is fabricated illusion?

“These questions are not philosophy. They are survival.”

Resistance: What Must Be Done

If this feels like a fight for existence, that’s because it is. Resistance means refusing to normalize machine actors as legitimate peers.

  • Name the threat: Call out AI “talent” as simulations, not artists. Never allow their framing to equalize human and machine.
  • Union fortification: SAG-AFTRA, IATSE, DGA, WGA — every contract must explicitly ban synthetic “talent” from replacing human labor.
  • Policy and law: Demand legislation requiring clear labeling of AI-generated media. Push for compensation when AI uses our likeness, voice, or work as training data.
  • Audience awareness: Teach the public to question what they see. To understand that art without humanity is product, not story.
  • Collective refusal: Creatives must stand united in declining to feed these systems our work. The more we train them, the more we accelerate our own disappearance.

Resilience: How We Reclaim the Future

Resistance alone is not enough. We need resilience — a blueprint for what survives:

  • Reinvest in the live: Theater, concerts, site-specific performance — the experiences no AI can replicate. Presence becomes protest.
  • Build human-first studios: Independent companies committed to hiring flesh-and-blood actors, crew, designers. Create an ecosystem outside corporate adoption.
  • Educate audiences: Lead campaigns that showcase the raw, messy, irreplaceable beauty of human work.
  • Hybrid on our terms: Use AI as a tool, not a replacement — a lighting match, not the fire. Harness it for scheduling, budgeting, research — but keep the soul human.
  • International solidarity: Connect with creators globally. What starts in Hollywood echoes everywhere. This is a fight for art, not geography.

“Resilience means not just surviving — but reclaiming the ground, redefining the value of humanity in art.”

The Call

This is not about nostalgia. This is about survival.

If we allow corporations to normalize avatars like Tilly Norwood as the “future of acting,” then acting itself dies. Along with it: the crews, the designers, the artists, the voices.

Art becomes just another supply chain. We become just another audience for hallucinations.

“We must resist. We must build resilience. We must say — loudly, without hesitation: We don’t fall in love with replicas. We fall in love with the real.”

Because once the human is gone from art, the world doesn’t just lose entertainment. It loses its soul.

About Paul

Paul Russell’s career in the entertainment industry spans over forty years as an award-winning casting director and stage director. He has cast for 20th Century Fox, HBO, Broadway, and major regional theaters.

A frequent guest artist at university BFA and MFA actor training programs, Paul also teaches private master classes to actors worldwide.

He is the author of the expanded Second Edition of ACTING: Make It Your Business – How to Avoid Mistakes and Achieve Success as a Working Actor.

More Answers For Actors:

How Actors Motivate and Unite Us – The Actor’s Role in Life as The Idealist.

“Something is stirring, shifting ground
It’s just begun
Edges are blurring, all around
And yesterday is done”

Our Time
MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG
Stephen Sondheim

Dr. Nicola Davies, a Senior Medical Writer with a PhD in Health Psychology, and BSc in Psychology wrote in 2012 that an “identifying trait” of an Idealist is:  “Their outlook on the future is always optimistic; the world can and will become a better place…”

Sixty-six years prior to Dr. Davies’s learned musings a songwriter—unable to write or read musical notation and possessing only two years of formal education—penned a tune for a community he knew well:

“There’s no people like show people, they smile when they are low…

You get word before the show has started that your favorite uncle died at dawn

Top of that, your pa and ma have parted, you’re broken-hearted, but you go on…”

Written for the musical Annie Get Your Gun, “There’s No Business Like Show Business” was composed by Russian-born immigrant, (Israel Baline) Irving Berlin. His “pa” died when Berlin was eight years old. As Berlin wrote, “but you go on,” Berlin he did despite many challenges to become an American master composer. His songs which include, “Blue Skies,” “Happy Holidays,” “White Christmas,” and “God Bless America” ring with an idealist’s optimism.

“There’s No Business Like Show Business” has become an unofficial anthem for an expansive ensemble of Idealists: show people. People committed to living their profession’s purpose to elevate and enrich the human spirit and condition. Placing “we” before “me.” We turn to show people for rejuvenation when our idealism is depleted.

Dr. Davies suggests we are drawn to Idealists, “because they will go out of their way to help people, and not just their friends.”

People of “show” play a role in protecting the “we” from deleterious mental health according to research.

Edgar Jones, professor of the history of medicine at King’s College released research on the effect of entertainment (show people) has on UK’s armed forces morale and psychological health during conflict. As reported by the BBC: “Professor Jones says studies show that as morale falls, psychological disorders rise…. ‘Morale is so important. It drives what you do and the way you do it. When morale falls off you lose determination, and that’s contagious,’ he said.”

During the COVID pandemic the morale of the world “fell off.” We turned to show people via our phones, computers, and TVs. Show people smiling despite their own morale being near mortally wounded. The business of show was (and nearly continues to be) decimated. To a point of there being no business to employ show people. Hollywood came to a standstill. Broadway, since March 2020, remains dark until at least the end of May 2021. Live, in-person, audience-attended, entertainment (theater, dance, music, comedy) is mostly in stasis. But within the ensemble of show people idealism/optimism persevered. Show people found new ways via video platforms to enrich and elevate our human spirit and condition. Creating solutions to challenges is necessary for the idealistic show person’s reality. Show people live a profession that encounters, almost daily, debilitating challenges professionally and personally. Yet many show people push forward with idealism.

Without show people’s idealism, its game over for them, and for the “we.”

Related: Being an Actor Means Maintaining Idealism

From the New & Expanded Edition of,

ACTING: Make It Your Business
– How to Avoid Mistakes and Achieve Success as a Working Actor

Chapter 2
Being An Actor – A Tough Love (excerpt, pg. 80)

Do you recall that initial flush of joy following the first audition you aced or during the applause of your first bow taken alone? When your first thoughts of being a professional actor had no obstacles? Possibilities seemed endless? That is idealism. Holding onto your early wonderment is the greatest perpetual challenge an actor faces. Lose your idealism and you lose yourself. Game over.

Idealism is both a burden and an asset on our journeys as artists. We must lug the load of enthusiasm upon our backs when the trail rises. And we ride idealism’s joys on leveling plains and gently rolling downgrades. Dismissive civilians, unsupportive family or friends, and criticizing peers often weigh down our idealism by loading on us doubt-provoking comments such as “What’ve I seen you in lately?” “How come you don’t have an agent?” “Why don’t you have a better agent?” “Why aren’t you famous?” and “When will you grow up and get a real life?”

But the dangerous comments that lessen an actor’s idealism come not from others but can come forth from within the actor. Thoughts like “What is my career?” “Where am I going?” “How much longer until I reach . . . wait . . . what am I reaching for?” “Do I know? I think so. But my sight is sometimes blurred by a blizzard of doubt.”

Doubt kills idealism. An actor must slaughter the assailing dissent before it murders your dreams. Kill the doubt. To keep your idealism alive—that joy you had when first beginning your career—you must cease thoughts, words, and actions that plot to diminish your wonder.

For any actor to succeed, he or she must recall during times of doubt why they first began acting as a journey. What was the lighted joy that sparked the imagination illuminating you forward? Idealism’s flame will flicker during gusts of despair. Protect the flame from crosswinds that threaten to extinguish the glow. No one else but you can keep lit the lantern that is your idealism.

ABOUT PAUL RUSSELL – PAUL RUSSELL CASTING

Paul Russell has been in the entertainment industry for over forty years as an award-winning casting director, director and the author of NEW & EXPANDED edition of ACTING: Make It Your Business. He’s cast for 20th Century Fox, HBO, Broadway, and regional theater. Featured in American Theatre Magazine, Paul has directed premiers, and at the Tony-award recognized Barter Theatre. He teaches master classes at university BFA and MFA actor training programs, and privately online with actors globally. Paul began his career in entertainment as a successful working actor.

Visit the NEW & EXPANDED edition of ACTING: Make It Your Business – How to Avoid Mistakes and Achieve Success as a Working Actor!
http://www.ActingMakeItYourBusiness.com

Visit Paul & Paul Russell Casting @ PaulRussell.net.

http://www.ActingMakeItYourBusiness.com