Reviewing the past is a luxury I cannot afford. It’s a stupid trap that can catapult you into a depression that will send you packing to an ashram in the Catskills or opening an Etsy store selling sculptures made from chewing gum. I am auditioning for a role in a commercial, I tell myself. It’s not glamorous; it’s like being a plumber. You are filling a need, and sometimes you’re working with crap, you’re just not as well paid.
This is how I made a living at the onset of my career. I was excited when picked to be in the company of “Grapes,” “Apple,” and “Leaf” for a Fruit of the Loom commercial in the 1980s. After all, Academy Award–winner F. Murray Abraham had famously played “Leaf” in a series of the spots. I sang about McDonald’s “two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame-seed bun” with gusto, but I also made spots for local beauty schools and sketchy technical colleges. When you’re on TV every week, you can negotiate generous endorsement rates, but I’ve come full circle and am back to auditioning for work at the basic union wages.
Many actors whose careers have middled like mine give up competing for these gigs. It’s a numbers game and it can be soul-crushing. You might hustle to hundreds of auditions where you will wait for hours at a time, only to be instructed to act like you have a headache “this big,” which you actually have now that you’ve waited so long to be seen, and still not get a job offer. On top of that, when you amortize the time it takes to get a single job by the daily rate, it doesn’t make financial sense unless the commercial runs often, which is when the real money comes in, and you have no way of knowing if you have been lucky enough that the one you have booked will yield big returns. Years of training can seem completely tangential to waltzing around a kitchen to “Makin’ Whoopee” while cradling a ketchup bottle, but I was certain that my Heinz salsa-style ketchup commercial was going to rake in big bucks. This was in 1993, when anticipation for salsa-style ketchup was being touted in the press and it was positively infectious. There was so much excitement on the set you would think we were making the sequel to Citizen Kane. As it turns out, people like salsa and people like ketchup, but people like to enjoy them separately, and the commercial was quickly pulled.
Still, I have always enjoyed the actual work, even though commercial acting, in the pecking order of show business, is the near lowest rung but for background work. Background performers, “extras,” are viewed as scenery that requires bathroom breaks at inconvenient moments.* The hierarchy could be calculated something like this:
Tom Cruise is some very intense heroic character
Movie star
TV star
Reality TV star
Series regular
Cameo
Guest star
Costar
Sober companion to a recently rehabbed star
Former reality-TV star
Recently deceased television star
Starbucks barista
Commercial actor
Sloth
Background performer
Actress over the age of fifty
With my hair blown dry again and bright costuming, surely I have at least as good a chance at getting this gig as a recently deceased TV star.
Five actresses walk into the room with me. I am the first one to say my name. Smiles frozen on our faces, we hold our breath as the director makes his pronouncement: “No, no, no, no, yes.” I file out of the room on wobbly legs along with three other actresses. We are dismissed. As we gather our coats and purses, we attempt to laugh it off, shrug our shoulders and return to our lives, but I can’t believe it. I made an effort. That’s when someone emerges from the room. He strides toward me, past a group of defeated-looking, slightly paunchy men who are all wearing bathrobes. They must be here for a husband role.
“Annabelle, it’s Dan, Adina’s friend, from New York.” With his cashmere sweater, expensive watch, loafers and pressed jeans, he’s definitely dressed too upscale to be auditioning.
“Oh, Dan, hi.” Dan and I have met several times over the years through Adina, a mutual friend in New York. I hadn’t recognized him among the sea of faces who hadn’t introduced themselves or even greeted us in the audition room.
“This is my account. I’m so sorry, that’s just how the director is.”
“Oh, no problem,” I say, trying to appear unaffected. The last time I saw him we were seated together at a dinner party; now I was just another actor vying for employment. “How long are you in town?”
“I’m not sure, we’ve got one more session. We’re casting for villagers.”
“You mean like, ‘It takes a village’ villagers . . . a group of mothers?”
“No, our story takes our modern dad into the Middle Ages, where we need marauding villagers.”
“I can maraud,” I announce.
“But we need people who look unkempt, disheveled. Unless you were royalty, the Middle Ages were really tough on people,” he says.
I would like to point out how hard the middle ages are on 99 percent of us in this day and age, but I’m trying to get a job. “I made an effort,” I blurt out. “Marauding villager, that’s my normal.”
“Okay, well, I’ll see what I can do.”
He emails later with the information that they haven’t cast all the villagers yet, and that is how I come to be spending the evening sending pictures taken with my computer camera looking exactly how I did before I attempted to approximate a nice mom with an itch to scratch on her nasolabial folds.
I wake up to the news that I’ve been chosen to maraud. I show up at the wardrobe fitting and am laced into a beautiful velvet bodice that the wardrobe mistress immediately covers with a bulky peasant blouse and shapeless skirt. She drapes a rough woolen tunic over the blouse and wraps me in a knitted shawl. I have never felt so ancient in my long life. My grandmother would weep. When I landed my first long-running role on television in the mid-1980s on the soap opera Guiding Light, playing a girl gang member, I wore a studded leather motorcycle jacket paired with a leotard and ripped leggings. She lamented, “I can’t believe my grandbaby looks like a prostitute. Couldn’t they put you in a nice twinset?” This would have killed her. I look exactly like my potato-farming ancestors from the Ukraine.
We are to shoot in the evening on the European street on the back lot of Universal Studios. It’s exciting to pull up to the historic medieval town streets lined with small turreted brick buildings crisscrossed with wooden beams, stained-glass windows, and low tiled roofs, even if they are actually only stucco façades. I intend to maraud like there’s no tomorrow. The entire area is swarming with crew members, cranes and a large cast of extras. A spindly biped with a felt dunce cap precariously balanced on his skull ambles by and tips his hat in my direction. His skeletal frame and impossibly long limbs give him the appearance of a medieval arthropod. I spot a wrinkled and stooped creature who appears to have gone through extensive special effects, with his sallow, sunken cheeks and half-dozen tendrils of greasy hair emerging from his otherwise bald head. I am about to compliment him when he smiles at me and I see that he has no teeth and is, in fact, heading into the makeup trailer. A group of rotund men with ruddy faces and long wispy beards wearing-lederhosen (their own?) are standing in a circle chugging coffee from mugs while leaning on pitchforks. It isn’t their first time at this rodeo; some have brought their own stadium chairs. A gaggle of pink-cheeked plump matrons who look like dumplings in kerchiefs are lolling about the craft services table. The temperature is falling fast, the sun hasn’t even set yet and there isn’t an indoor waiting area for the background actors, just an open tent with a portable heater and metal folding chairs.
I spot one of the mothers from my son’s school among the background matrons. She and I have worked on PTA events together, and from her obvious mortification at being recognized, I know that she must have her own long and winding road that’s brough
t her to this evening. I invite her to come and hang out in my trailer, but that’s before I learn that my own accommodations aren’t much of an improvement over the background holding area.
When you’re the star, you get a big trailer to yourself. It is often tricked out with several seating areas, an eat-in kitchen, and a bathroom with a shower. I’ve enjoyed those trappings. It can make it very easy to show up on set and do your best work when you’ve been comfortably preparing in your plush digs. For a big honking star, the sky’s the limit. I accidentally wandered into Eddie Murphy’s encampment when I worked with him on Daddy Day Care. There were several trailers, an outdoor lounge complete with artificial grass, private gym and basketball hoop. If you’re playing a supporting role, you might be housed in a “double banger”: this is essentially half the size of a star’s trailer, but comfortable nonetheless. For commercials or smaller roles, you can find yourself ensconced in a trailer that’s been divided into a row of narrow airless cubicles called a “honey wagon.” These rooms are typically as luxurious as a prison cell. This particular trailer appears to have last been updated in the late 1980s; the only amenity is a transistor radio with a cassette player. It’s actually little more than a bathroom stall. A padded cushion covers the toilet located at the far end of the five-by-ten-foot compartment. The sickly sweet smell of air freshener hangs in the air.
There are eight of us principals, and the producers have assigned two of us to each of these pens, which are a tight fit for even one person. None of us has ever been asked to share such a small space as all of us are experienced and accomplished professionals. Basically, it’s like you’d held a position that came with a title and a corner office and are now back in the mailroom. On a trial basis.
As I stash my belongings inside our cramped cubbyhole, I’m thinking about how common it is now for people in their fifties and sixties to spend months fruitlessly searching for work, facing rejection and reinventing themselves with Plans C and D. Only that morning I’d read about an American woman who aged out of her career in business management. After several years of seeking employment, she’d been able to secure a position with a company located in Pakistan. She had to dress modestly, couldn’t walk the streets alone, lived in a rooming house—and this was a success story! With my credentials, I couldn’t even get a job in Peshawar. I’ve got to make this work.
Both the background and principals are hustled through hair and makeup together and I’m convinced the scowling makeup person is mistaking me for a background performer. She rubs dirt on my face and flattens my hair to my head with the heel of her hand. “You.” She points to me as I exit the trailer.
“Me?”
“Yes, you. Go wash your face. You’ve got some mascara on, it looks too modern. You should never show up for work with makeup on.”
“Okay.” I nod sheepishly, mentally noting that the actress who has gone in before me is wearing iridescent blue eye shadow.
“I’ve got my eye on you.”
We wait for the sky to darken so our nighttime shoot can begin. We villagers take photographs together. We’re giddy. We can’t believe how terrible we look, plus we’re all sure we’re going to go into overtime. We’re going to make some scratch. The sky darkens and the assistant director assembles our group where the first shot of the night is being set up. He gives us the scoop.
“There’s a giant green troll chasing you through the streets. The troll will be CGIed in postproduction later, so for now, you’ll see a prop guy carrying a long stick with lights on the top of it. But you’re actors, right? You can all pretend to see the troll.”
One of the villagers portrayed the grandmother in Napoleon Dynamite. Another is a recognizable comedian who once starred in his own Showtime comedy special. “I think we can manage,” we murmur amid chuckles.
There appears to be an army of prop guys readying the area. They hose down the cobblestones with water. My period boots have only a thin leather sole and are soaked through to my tights, but I’m not going to be the first to complain. Horses will run past us, we’re told. The magical words “hazard pay” spread through the group in an excited whisper.
“Hazard pay for the horses and the water.”
“How much extra do we get?”
“I don’t know, but it’s a lot!” one of the villagers exclaims.
We are instructed to assemble in front of the director, who makes his selection. “You, you, and you.” Including me. These are the only words he will address directly to us during the entire twelve hours we will spend together. The assistant director places we few, we happy few, we band of villagers on the street and the other principals head back to the honey wagon. Grasshopper and Ole Toothless aren’t principals, but they get prime spots in the front of the pack. I’m not surprised. These guys look fossilized. I would feature them.
“Who wants to carry a torch?” the prop master barks.
“A lit torch?”
“Yeah.”
“Like, on fire?”
“Yeah.”
“Me, I want to do that!”
I think of myself as someone who is up for adventure. I’ve performed roles where I’ve had explosive charges attached to my person, fired machine guns, learned to sing opera, kissed Rodney Dangerfield. And just like that, a prop guy dips a heavy wooden club wrapped in gauze into a bucket of kerosene, hands it to me and ignites it with a blowtorch. No one has asked, Are you someone who should be carrying a torch? Have any suicidal ideation? How well do you balance running on wet cobblestones? Have any anger management issues? How about wondering what kind of person jumps at the chance to run through the streets with a lit torch? Nope.
“Is there anything we should know about these torches?” I ask casually.
“Oh, we’ll do fire training.” But as he steps back into the shadows, the shot is called.
“Action. Villagers with torches run toward the troll,” I hear the director say from behind a video monitor, where he’s viewing a live feed of the footage being shot.
A mob of two dozen peasants rushes forward, jostling for position. Each one of us principals knows that if you aren’t recognizable on camera, you will not earn residuals. Each one of the background people knows if they are recognizable, they have a shot at being upgraded to principal. It’s clear that no one in charge cares about which of us are seen.
It’s been almost thirty years since I worked as background, and that’s what this feels like. I was always sure that my talent would catch the eye of the director. Now I’m just trying not to slip and fall.
“Bait the troll with your torches!”
Villagers are thrusting their torches at the imaginary menace.
“Now turn and run.”
As I pivot, something hot brushes the back of my neck.
“Uh, you.” He points to the bonneted female extra whose torch is dangerously close to my hair. It’s my PTA buddy. “I love your enthusiasm, lady, but we don’t carry that much insurance. Hold your torch a little higher.” And that’s the extent of our fire training. “I can’t sell cupcakes at Jazz band B’s concert on Friday night if my head goes up in flames,” I say, trying to remain friendly, but I catch a glint in her eye that tells me she’s vying for a good position. It’s every serf for herself, and I’ll have to watch my back. We repeat this several times. Each time the director adds and subtracts extras from a seemingly endless supply that emerges from the background tent.
“Did you put mascara back on?” the makeup person shouts over the chaos. She has singled me out between shots. PTA mom is wearing frosted coral lip gloss, another gal has visibly feathered bangs, but something about me just irks her. I actually have put mascara back on.
“No, I didn’t.”
She swabs more dirt on my face and then pulls out a wimple and pushes it over my hair and low down onto my forehead and retreats to the sidelines. I ask one of the assistant director
s if he thinks it will be a continuity problem that I now am wearing a wimple, as I’ve been established without it. He explodes into peals of laughter. “All of you peasants are, like, this big in the frame,” he says, pinching his thumb and forefinger into an inch. Yes, my mascara must certainly be distracting in the infinitesimally miniature pixel it is taking up in the frame of the commercial. I am basically a lumpy sack topped with a doily. On the other hand, it’s surprisingly freeing to have any burden of beauty lifted.
After the shot, the production team begins setting up on another part of the street and the principals are dismissed. No one comes to check in on us for the next three hours. It’s forty degrees and the sewer smell is so strong that we can’t close the door to the honey wagon, so we’re shivering. We abandon ship, head into the background tent to warm up, then set off in search of information. We run into a crew guy who is handing out army blankets. We wrap them around ourselves and wander over to an area we can see lit from several hundred feet away. They are shooting another vignette. Only background actors are in the shot. PTA mom is pushing a rusty wheelbarrow piled high with dirt through a cobblestoned alleyway. I make a mental note to let her do all heavy lifting at school functions in the future—she’s an ox. We inquire if we are needed and the assistant director stares at us like we’ve asked him to explain string theory. “We’ll call you when we need you.”
By one a.m., we’re still waiting to hear when we’ll be called to the set. One of the villagers tells us that she’s done another spot with this director.
She was one of two actresses cast in the same role for that job.
“I like your face, but I like her body better,” he told her.
During the shoot, each actress alternately performed the same action, which consisted of loading paper into a copier. They shared a dressing room and were called to set as “Body” and “Face.” Face is incredibly beautiful. She is French, and even though her flawless complexion is stained with dirt, she’s fetchingly gamine. Dressed as she is in a low-cut bodice, I can’t even imagine how the other actress could have a better body. Months later, she found out that Body had won out. French Face’s version never made it out of the can.
I See You Made an Effort: Compliments, Indignities, and Survival Stories from the Edge of 50 Page 8