We know what characters are: the fictional personae that populate our pages and screens. We know what actors are too: the paid professionals who portray those characters on screens and stages. A squishier grey area in the middle is populated by two (frequently overlapping) concepts: the actor’s “public persona” (the image they project when they are in the public eye as “themselves,” which is not entirely unperformative) and the “actor text,” or valance of associations from prior roles that tend to attach themselves to performers.