In this article, categories of a materialist account of cultural production are deployed in an effort to understand the activity of women actors in film and television as work. The article begins by considering two theoretical repertoires with which might be theorized the activity of women actors, (1) cultural and media studies, and (2) studies of work and organization. It is argued that both have effectively silenced the work of women actors and that each is limited by its isolation from the other. In order to address these problems, du Gay et al.'s model of a `circuit of culture' is presented, in which cultural products move between various moments of representation, identity, production, consumption and regulation. While such a model offers a way of moving beyond a strict separation of the production and consumption of images, it is aimed to problematize and complexify this model. The importance of a focus on the relations of cultural production is indicated, and, while recognizing that a deculturalized determinism may creep into any analysis of work, the activity of women actors at work is situated in a critical node in the politics of cultural production.
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