‘We want to be at work’: working actors struggle with bills but vow to fight on
Hollywood actors marked 100 days on strike last weekend, and while they are feeling the financial strain of months without work, they have found renewed resolution in their fight against the studios.
Raquel Bell joined her colleagues on the picket line at Paramount Studios in Los Angeles on Friday for the first time since the beginning of the strike in July. It was the first day she had been able to make it away from her second job as a caregiver in a nursing home, and come kid-free.
“I’m just trying to get anything I can in order to be able to pay bills,” Bell said. “And not just that, I’m concerned about my medical insurance because I have two children.”
Bell is a working actor with 15 years’ experience in TV and commercials. She said she just had to cancel internet service at her home to make ends meet this month. “It’s really troublesome because my children need the internet to do school at home,” she said. “So we have to just do without it.”
Working actors like Bell are weathering the strike by picking up other jobs. Brendan Bradley, a 17-year member of Sag-Aftra, the actors’ union on strike, said he’s worked side jobs from carpentry to catering throughout his career. To make ends meet during the strike, he’s performing in virtual reality theater. Kate Comer, an actor for nearly 15 years, said emergency financialassistance grants from the Entertainment Community Fund and Sag-Aftra Foundation helped her catch up on some bills. “It helped me to take my car in to get checked. It helped me to pay rent for at least like a month.” Jessie Brown, a background actor for several years, also said she relies on grants, donations of food and water on the picket line, and her own father. “And I hate to do that because he’s … on a fixed income. It’s just a very stuck situ