It took me a while to figure out what you were doing, but after a while I finally discovered. It looks nice, but... isn't it easier to create a hash with the possible $_actions?
Update: Hmm... it's an almost 3 years old thread. Should have checked that before posting.
Using a hash would be the simple option, indeed, but leads to less generalized code. If I had to do something like this again, I'd do it precisely as perrin suggested.