Short answers, pulled from the story.
The first recorded actor was the Greek performer Thespis, who stepped onto the stage at the Theatre Dionysus in 534 BC to become the first known person to speak words as a character in a play. Before Thespis, Grecian stories were expressed only through song, dance, and third-person narration. Actors are still commonly called Thespians in his honor.
Women were first allowed to perform on the English stage after the Restoration of 1660, when Charles II issued letters patent to Thomas Killigrew and William Davenant that were reissued in 1662 explicitly permitting actresses. Margaret Hughes is often credited as the first professional actress on the English stage under this arrangement.
Lucrezia Di Siena, whose name appears on an acting contract dated the 10th of October 1564, is recognized as the first Italian actress known by name. Vincenza Armani and Barbara Flaminia followed as the first well-documented primadonnas and actresses in Italy and Europe.
A Forbes analysis of 2013 US acting salaries found that the top-paid male actors earned roughly two and a half times as much as the top-paid actresses, meaning the best-compensated women made about 40 cents for every dollar the best-compensated men made. In 2015, Forbes also reported that only 21 of the 100 top-grossing films of 2014 featured a female lead or co-lead.
Stanislavski's system asks actors to draw on their own feelings and experiences to convey the emotional truth of a character, placing themselves in the character's mindset to find genuine common ground. Lee Strasberg formalized a related approach called method acting, and Stella Adler and Sanford Meisner each developed distinct techniques also rooted in Stanislavski's ideas.
California's Coogan Act requires 15% of a child actor's earnings to be placed in a blocked trust account, which the child can access only upon reaching legal adulthood. Illinois, New York, New Mexico, and Louisiana have enacted similar protections. Union child actors in the United States are paid a daily rate of at least $1,204, though most or all of that income typically goes to parents or legal guardians.