actress
Pluralactresses
- 1A woman who performs in plays, films, or other dramatic productions.
The lead actress delivered her lines with quiet intensity.
Several actresses auditioned for the role of the queen.
Similarperformer
Note
Built in English from actor plus the feminine suffix -ess, probably without borrowing French actrice. The word now carries a usage question. Peter Corris's Torn Apart (2010) captures the shift: "I'm an actress -- actor, as we have to say these days." Actress is still in ordinary use, though: The Economist in 2011 describes Sienna Miller simply as an actress. Writers can choose either word, aware that actor is increasingly expected.
- 2A woman who does something or brings it about; a female agent or doer.
My mental anguish, and the dreadful scenes in which I had been an actress, advanced the period of my labour.
1796, Matthew Lewis, The MonkNote
Older prose uses the word for any woman who takes part in a deed, with no stage in sight. In Matthew Lewis's The Monk (1796), a speaker recalls "the dreadful scenes in which I had been an actress". Those are scenes of real events, which makes the line easy to misread as the stage sense. The usage is archaic and now rare. Modern readers would hear it as theatrical, so keep it for reading older texts.
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Origin
Formed from "actor" plus the feminine suffix "-ess", probably created independently of Middle French "actrice".