2023-07-14 04:56:00
This British actor has starred in successful series such as “Modern Family”, “Star Trek: Picard” or “Dahmer: Monster – The Jeffrey Dahmer Story”, a production which has just been nominated for the Emmy Awards, the equivalent of the television Oscars.
And yet, even following 15 years of career in the United States, his reality does not resemble the daily newspapers of the stars on the front page of the people press.
For “99% of actors” daily life happens “in the field, auditioning, jostling and fighting to get into the audition rooms”, he explains. And that often requires taking on a little job.
During his first six years in Los Angeles, Mr. Burgess worked part-time at a small movie theater for $7.75 an hour, to supplement his meager acting income.
Today, he “fully supports” the strike called by his union, the SAG-AFTRA guild, which represents 160,000 actors and other professionals on the small and big screen in the United States. “We all want to work, but at what cost, when salary and residual income are no longer viable for actors?”
“I have to be able to pay my rent and my cat’s insulin,” he insists.
A situation that is becoming “unsustainable”
Most actors have two sources of income: their fees for each series or film, and the famous “residual” income, currently at the heart of negotiations with employers. These are paid for each rebroadcast of a work, and are very low for a passage on a streaming platform.
Despite a stature that now allows him “to be able to support himself by acting”, Mr. Burgess has seen all his salaries drop over the years, whatever their type. Studios and television channels are constantly “tightening the screw”.
Currently, he is often offered “the bare minimum” provided for by the scales of the union. A particularly pronounced trend among streaming platforms, according to him.
“I worked this year for a company for which I worked in 2012, and I am paid less for my services than ten years ago”, says the actor.
Already deprived of screenwriters, Hollywood trembles in the face of a possible actors’ strike: “A lot of people are taking second jobs”
The union minimum may seem high: a television actor must be paid at least 1,082 dollars per day on a shoot. But between the agent, legal fees and taxes, half of this sum flies away, recalls Mr. Burgess.
And producers can ask an actor paid for just one or two days to stay available for weeks, because of the uncertainty of the shooting schedule.
“It’s pretty common,” he says. “That $500 then has to last eight days, 16 days or 21 days if it’s a high profile series. It becomes unsustainable.”
Studios and platforms are also increasingly resorting to other cost-saving measures, such as downgrading actors in official hiring categories (“series regular”, “recurring guest star”, etc.) to pay them less.
Fierce competition
The actor did not expect this life when he arrived in the United States 16 years ago.
Working in Los Angeles “has always been my goal, because I was raised on The X-Files, Buffy, Twin Peaks and Star Trek. have gravity,” he recalls.
Upon arriving from England, Hollywood was in the midst of the latest writers’ strike, which lasted 100 days in 2007-2008.
“At the time, casting directors met people in person. I met more casting directors in three weeks in Los Angeles than in three years in London,” he recalls.
But since the pandemic, most auditions have been “self-recorded”: actors have to film themselves, often without even knowing if their performance will be viewed well.
Mr. Burgess, however, does not imagine himself to be a thing.
“We’re artists, actors, writers and creators, and I think some take advantage of that sometimes – the studios know we love what we do,” he sighs.
But what else can you do, in the face of fierce competition? To refuse a production paid at minimum wage is to expose yourself to “450 other actors right behind you, who will say + Yes, I do +”.
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