Breaking into Acting For Dummies. Larry Garrison

conditions, restricted the time limits that actors can be expected to work each day, provided legal counsel, and even offered health and retirement plans.

Although a union’s main job is to protect your rights and ensure that you’re paid fairly, unions also offer a variety of other services that can make your quest for an acting career much simpler. Many unions offer seminars and workshops to help their members find work; they maintain bulletin boards where actors can post classified advertisements, buying or selling various items or advertising the availability of rooms or apartments; and they furnish libraries where members can borrow and study scripts. As a union member, you may qualify for a whole range of additional benefits, including credit union membership, health insurance, pension plans, and even access to a retirement home. Be sure to find these things out when you’re applying for membership and take advantage of whatever services your union offers.

      

If you’re just getting started in acting, you may not want to join any union right away because joining the union effectively eliminates you from working on non-union productions. As a beginner, you may want to get experience working in the more numerous (but lower paying) non-union productions first. You don’t have to join a union to work as an actor, but the highest-paying and most prestigious acting roles almost always go to union members, so when you’ve reached a point where you can vie for those roles, joining a union is a wise thing to do. Ultimately your goal is to get into the union.

      Be prepared — when you decide to join a union, the cost to join may be fairly expensive. Also, after joining a union, you must pay dues regularly (probably semi-annually), but the regular dues are much less expensive than the initial union membership dues.

      

If you are aware of a union production that’s breaking a union rule, call the union (even if you’re not a union member) and ask them to investigate this problem. The unions are your friends, so treat them with respect and don’t be afraid to ask for their help at any time during your acting career.

      The two most popular actors’ unions, which we discuss in the following sections, are

       The Screen Actors Guild (SAG-AFTRA)

       Actors’ Equity Association (AEA, also known as Equity)

      

Working at a union’s office, either as a volunteer or paid employee, is an excellent way to meet actors, writers, casting directors, and producers.

      The Screen Actors Guild (SAG-AFTRA)

      The Screen Actors Guild (www.sagaftra.org) covers actors primarily involved in films (both commercial films, industrial films and television). In addition, SAG also maintains a list of agencies that have agreed to follow SAG guidelines for working with actors. Check the website for the latest requirements to join.

      

If you ever sign up with a non-SAG affiliated talent agency, you may not be treated fairly. A non-SAG agent likely won’t hear of the higher-paying union roles available, either.

One of the first major goals of any actor in film or TV should be to get into SAG. This process is often referred to as “getting your SAG card” (and, yes, you really do get a membership card).

      

Getting your SAG card is no guarantee of employment, let alone fame or money. The large majority of SAG members earn less than $7,500 a year.

      Actors’ Equity Association

      The Actors’ Equity Association (www.actorsequity.org), which is also known simply as Equity, covers actors who perform in theater. (The British branch of Equity offers its own website at www.equity.org.uk, and you can find the Canadian branch of Equity at www.caea.com.)

      Equity is the oldest of all the actors’ unions (formed in 1919) and began as a way to counterbalance the power producers held over actors. Actors in theater often got paid marginal wages (if they got paid at all), were forced to endure horrible working conditions, never got paid extra for working on holidays, had to make or buy their own costumes, and could be forced to attend unlimited numbers of rehearsals for any length of time — all without any pay, of course.

      To protect its members, Equity forced producers to post sufficient advance funds to guarantee salaries and benefits, established minimum salaries and pay for rehearsal time, and even established rules forbidding producers to force actors to work in any theater that discriminated against audience members because of race, color, or creed (later modified to include gender, sexual preferences, and political beliefs).

      Like SAG, Equity has also established guidelines for how agents should treat actors. When looking for an agent, call your local Equity office and ask for a list of Equity-franchised agencies.

      

After you join Equity, never work on a non-Equity production, or else you could be fined and lose your Equity membership. Equity may allow its members to work in non-Equity productions that are sponsored by charities or religious organizations, but make sure that you get written permission first.

      

In some small cities, Equity productions may be scarce. If Equity work is limited in your area, you may want to delay joining the union until you can be sure of getting more steady Equity work.

THE DE HAVILLAND DECISION

      In the mid-1940s, studios dictated the roles that actors could play. Actors often had to change their appearance for different roles and appear in less-than-satisfactory roles that could potentially damage an actor’s fledging career. If an actor rejected a particular role, the studio could suspend that actor from working. Because actors were under contract to work for one particular studio, studios essentially dictated the future of an actor’s career.

      Even worse, studios would often extend an actor’s contract against his or her will, effectively enslaving that actor to that studio. After appearing as Melanie Hamilton in Gone With the Wind, actress Olivia de Havilland rebelled against the restrictions in her contract and wound up getting a six-month suspension from Warner Brothers Studio as a result.

      So Olivia took Warner Brothers Studio to court to fight for her right to choose her own roles. After three years, the courts decided in Olivia’s favor and ruled that she could leave her contract with Warner Brothers. This court battle became known as the “de Havilland decision,” and it forever changed the way actors and studios worked together.

      After the courts allowed Olivia de Havilland to get out of her contract with Warner Brothers, other major film stars began using the de Havilland decision to justify getting out of their contracts as well, further strengthening the role of the then-fledgling Screen Actors Guild.

      Today, actors regularly work for different studios and have the freedom to choose their roles at any time. Of course, judging from some of the roles actors have chosen, they still manage to appear in bombs every now and then, but at least now they have no one to blame but themselves.

Part 2

      Packaging and Marketing Yourself

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