I support the writer’s guild strike because they are not part of the bourgeoisie. The same can’t be said of a lot of these rich actors who own a ton of capital themselves. So on the one hand, it kind of seems like the bourgeoisie is fighting the bourgeoisie on this one. On the other hand, not every actor in the guild is as successful as Tom Cruise, so some of those striking actors are working class.
A valid point to raise; I’d always figured extras, and small-timers were doing that kind of thing as a ‘between jobs’ endeavor, rather than that actually being a job for them-- and holy fuck, my heart. I can’t imagine trying to scrape it as a small-time actor without other avenues of work lined up.
Extras get paid 100 dollars a day (an extremely paltry sum) for 12 hour workdays IF they’re lucky and manage to find a shoot within 200km of themselves every 3 months or so.
It’s not like most actors have the luxury of having a well paying survival job between getting booked for acting work. The career demands a lot of personal investment and flexibility that the typical 9-5 doesn’t allow. For most it’s a pretty harsh life.