Every company in every sector needs someone to do finance. Anything you’re passionate about, you can find a role. When I was training to be a CA I had a colleague who was mad about golf. And where did he go to work? For a champion golf company.

A CA qualification shows you have a solid understanding of business, finance and accounting. It’s always there in your back pocket.

You’re immersed in a world you love, as a CA working in a sector like this – but you’re also immersed in the business of that world. You see the numbers and you’re involved in how everything plays out.

What should it cost? How do we get the most for our money? As a production accountant, I work with the production team and oversee the budget for a film or series, so these are the questions you have to ask. It’s a delicate balance; you don’t want to finish a series and realise you haven’t spent your budget or put everything you can on the screen. But at the same time, you have to do that without going over budget.

You have to forecast what’s going to happen, and what could happen, and make sure you have enough resource to get you to the end. Things move so fast, but you need to know where the film is on any given day and report weekly. And, of course, you have to account for every single penny accurately.

Sometimes while they’re filming they haven’t even sorted out how the story is going to end. So as they figure this out, the numbers change, the costs change, and you have to be right there to have those conversations – can we afford it? That’s the lovely thing about production accounting – you’re in the middle of it all, alongside the production team and the set.

It’s less glamorous than I thought it would be. Everybody on set is in jeans and T-shirts. I work with an incredible mix of people doing so many amazing things. On Ready Player One I was a construction accountant, and there were hundreds of people building these enormous sets. Then there’s the technology and the special effects, make-up artists and prosthetics. Every story is different, with its own mix of people to put it all together. The work environment is dynamic, ever changing.

I grew up in Northern Ireland, and at 18 I went to university in Glasgow. I was number six of seven children. For my parents, education was really important. They knew it could open so many doors.

“Find a way to mix the arts into what you want to do with the rest of your life.” That was my mum’s advice. I loved the arts as a kid – cinema, music, dance, languages – and I always wanted to travel. I joined a theatre group when I was 11 and it opened my eyes to playwrights. At first, I wanted to go down that path. But my mum reminded me how much I love languages and about my hopes to travel, so she encouraged me to find a course that could offer me that.

I searched for a long time to find a university course that mixed language with finance and business. Strathclyde University had just started a course called International Business and Modern Languages. I was part of the second intake. You had to study two languages and combine those with finance, economics and marketing. There was also a year’s placement in a European business school. Mine was at Kedge, in France.

It was a tough experience in Bordeaux. I was blown away by the dedication of the students. Everyone knew where they were going, and they had already done summer work and internships in major European companies. From them, I learned the importance of planning ahead for your career. And then, of course, there was the Bordeaux wine…

Doing numbers alone wasn’t my passion. After university, I had looked for a job that mixed finance and languages, and for a year I was an analyst for Reuters in Edinburgh, looking after French and Spanish-speaking companies. But somehow I had to blend the financial side with music or film and TV to stay interested. I phoned multiple agencies and they all said: “I’ve no idea how you would get that job. Why don’t you train to be an accountant first?”

For the first time I could see the sort of job I wanted might be possible. It happened while I was doing my CA training at PWC, which had accounts with Walt Disney, MTV and Pathé film. So I made sure I got experience with all of those clients.

The CA qualification gives you the confidence you need. You have to think about the different factors that can affect a business, so you get that broader business perspective because you have a strong foundation in all of them.

I took a step down from overseeing huge audits of millions. Suddenly I was given a petty-cash tin. This was when I trained to be an assistant production accountant with the Production Guild of Great Britain, a membership organisation for professionals in that industry. So I had to go in very junior, but I learned about every facet of production, every penny that goes through during a film.

I’m now helping to oversee the 2026 Assistant Production Accountant Training Scheme, and acting as mentor for it. Netflix has been supporting the training since 2016. This year is the first such course for deaf, disabled and neurodivergent people. We’ve got five amazing trainee accountants about to start.

I met Eddie ‘the Eagle’ Edwards while I was working on the film about his life, which starred Taron Egerton, who also played Elton John in Rocketman. It was an amazing story and Eddie was fantastic – so positive and full of energy.

Netflix were opening their first European office in Amsterdam. I’d been working freelance as a production accountant for 10 years and I got a call to see if I knew anyone who spoke Spanish for an accounts role. When they found out I did, they asked if I’d be interested in taking an in-house job.

“The CA is a wonderful qualification. Just point your arrow in the direction of whatever you really enjoy and find a job around that”

The beautiful thing about telling stories, either on film or TV, is that it opens people’s eyes to other people’s experiences. There’s always something to say that resonates. Every story is so different; it gives you the chance to learn something about people’s lives, to find out what makes them tick.

“You’re so lucky,” people would say during my training. “You know exactly what you want to do with your CA.” But it’s simple, really – it’s no different from picking out the magazine you like on the news-stand. Just point your arrow in the direction of whatever you really enjoy and find a job around that, then it’s never dull.

To switch off, I love being outdoors. That’s one of the reasons why I decided to move back to Ireland after 28 years working abroad – to be close to the beaches and the mountains, as well as my family, and for my son to grow up around his cousins. I love yoga too, and did my yoga teacher training when I was in Amsterdam.

The CA is a wonderful qualification. You can do with it what you dream of. And if you’re not sure which industry you want to work in, there are companies like PwC who will expose you to so many different businesses, big and small.

netflix.com

Read our 2025 feature with Pam McMenamin CA, formerly of Disney and the BBC