For Film and TV Extras, Cash Helps and Stars Amuse

The New York Times
By SARAH TOLAND
Published: April 5, 2009

Trent Calabretta lost his job at a private equity firm in December. As an extra, he landed on the CW show ?Gossip Girl.?

Laid off in December from a private equity firm downtown, Trent Calabretta, 26, found himself last month within a cubicle?s length of Angelina Jolie on a Manhattan set for the movie ?Salt.?

City Room: A Day, a Long Day, in the Life of an Extra (April 6, 2009)

?I?m not one to get star-struck, but it was a bit surreal,? Mr. Calabretta said. ?There were thousands of people there, and we were going up and down Park Avenue for this one parade scene. People were playing military officials and past presidents, and everyone was in different uniforms, and we were all trying to come together to shoot this one scene. When I saw Jolie, my first thought was, ?Well, she?s definitely not ugly.? ?

The $8 an hour Mr. Calabretta earned as a nonunion extra ? more recently, he was on the set of the CW?s ?Gossip Girl? ? will not cover the $1,750-per-month rent on his Upper East Side apartment, but he hopes the money he saved during three and a half years in finance will last until he finds a similar job.

?I?ve gotten a few paychecks as an extra, but I haven?t even looked at them yet,? Mr. Calabretta said. ?My intention is to get back into finance, and in the interim, I?m going to keep doing these fun little side jobs.?

Managers at casting agencies around New York said they were seeing increasing numbers of people like Mr. Calabretta who have little experience in, or even aspirations for, acting, but are filling hours they used to spend at office jobs with gigs as extra, also called background, talent.

At Extra Talent Agency, a Manhattan firm that casts extras for commercials, television shows and documentary films, the actor database swelled to 9,680 in March from 6,850 in December. Fleet Emerson, assistant casting director at Sylvia Fay/Lee Genick and Associates Casting, has seen correspondence from aspiring extras triple over the past several months, something he called ?quite a phenomenon.? And Grant Wilfley Casting, also in Manhattan, had open calls for new background talent in February and March that yielded 1,500 and 1,300 people, respectively.

?We were overwhelmed,? said Melissa Braun, senior casting associate at Grant Wilfley. ?In past years, it would have been very unusual to see that many people at an open call.?

Brad Kenney, manager of Central Casting New York, a major Manhattan agency that places extras on shows like ?Law & Order? and ?CSI: NY,? said the agency registers nearly 60 people on a nonunion day now, up from 30 or 40 a day six months ago. ?People are much more aware that there?s a lot of stuff being filmed in the city now, and there?s so much more greater interest,? he said. ?There?s also much more people desperate for work.?

Jamieson Van Loan, a graduate of the Institute of Culinary Education in Manhattan who lost her job at a catering company in January, recently spent several days playing a baker in the background of a movie starring Meryl Streep currently known as the ?Untitled Nancy Meyers Project.?

?I jumped at the chance to do it,? said Ms. Van Loan, who first appeared as an extra on ?Dawson?s Creek? while in college and is hoping to do more acting as she looks for full-time work as a chef. ?Doing background work is one of those things that, if it comes up, I?ll definitely do it,? she said. ?It?s fun, and it?s easy money.?

While acting is a temporary pursuit for Ms. Van Loan and Mr. Calabretta, some of the newly minted extras said they felt they had found a calling. Daniel Roy was a board operator and studio technician at Sirius Satellite Radio until he lost his job in December 2007. One unpaid gig on a friend?s independent film and some extra work on television shows, and Mr. Roy, of Jersey City, was ready to forget radio and pursue acting as a career.

?I felt like I was good at what I was doing and that I?m still young enough to give this acting thing a whirl,? said Mr. Roy, 26. ?If I never had lost my job, I would probably not be acting now.?

Colin Whitfield, 30, is a Brooklyn-based visual artist who does background work whenever he needs additional income. ?There?s a whole subculture of people in the city who make their living as extras,? he said. ?Many extras are like the Lost Boys ? outside-of-the-box individuals who come from inside-the-box places, like the suburbs. When they get on set, they find a family of eclectic, creative types, and it?s like, ?Welcome to the crew.? ?

Although Mr. Whitfield said he does not have the stamina to endure life as a full-time extra, which inevitably includes back-to-back 12-hour days on set, he understands the lure.

?Money be damned, the idea of being on a set with the cameras rolling has a whole Hollywood mystique to it that keeps these kids going,? he said. ?It?s not the long hours or the terrible paycheck ? it?s the glamour.?

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So you want to be an extra? Here are some links

http://bbs.backstage.com
http://bbs.backstage.com/eve/forums?a=search&reqWords=extra+work
http://www.extraextracastings.com/mainmenu.html