Business

Don't call them 'extras.' For one night, Hollywood's background actors are the real stars

Published

1 year ago

March 4, 2025

Don't call them 'extras.' For one night, Hollywood's background actors are the real stars

Striking a distinguished look in a gray suit with coiffed white hair, Vincent Teixeira stepped up to the podium, standing in front of fellow film and TV actors who filled the house at the 99-seat Eastwood Performing Arts Center in East Hollywood.

Like an old-timey silent movie performer, he then began gesturing with his arms and soundlessly mouthed words.

He paused for effect, before delivering the punchline. “Oh, we get to speak tonight,” he said, to laughs and applause from the crowd.

Teixeira’s joke especially resonated with this particular audience — nominees and supporters of the annual Los Angeles Union Background Actors Awards. People came dressed in tuxedos and full-length gowns, though others were in jeans and casual button-downs, to honor a category of performer better known for fading into the edges of the frame than seizing the spotlight.

For seven years, background actors have been recognizing their own at the ceremony — a show not televised or affiliated with the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, many were careful to say, though all of the nominees must be SAG-AFTRA members and several union representatives were in attendance.

The coveted prize? A mini Oscar-esque statuette known as a Blurry.

There are Blurries for best first responder look, best background actor ensemble and favorite casting director. The group even handed out a lifetime achievement award honoring Patrick Harrigan, a longtime background actor who has worn many hats over the years and got his start as a 12-year-old in the 1969 film “Hello, Dolly!”

Attendees had appeared in shows such as Netflix’s “A Man on the Inside,” medical drama “Doctor Odyssey” and FX thriller “Grotesquerie,” though they’d be far from household names. They gathered in the lobby of the theater, taking photos on the small red carpet in front of a backdrop bearing the award show’s name, or catching up while buying drinks and munchies from the small snack bar. Inside the theater, the stage was sparse, with only a floor-to-ceiling screen with the show’s logo.

The Blurries are, at times, tongue-in-cheek, as presenters poked fun at Hollywood and themselves, but the humor belies a more serious point — these are actors who desire respect, both from their colleagues and the industry.

“It’s part of Hollywood,” Harrigan told The Times. “We’re also in front of the camera, and we’re an important part of TV and film.”

The role of a background actor is intentionally subtle.

Actors attend the Los Angeles Union Background Actors Awards on Sunday, Feb. 16, 2025, in Los Angeles.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

They populate film and TV sets to make the on-screen world more vibrant and real. Their silent but purposeful presence gives energy to the principal actors, helping to create an environment where they can inhabit their roles. They’re the other patrons at the “Friends” coffee hangout Central Perk; the other drinkers at the “Cheers” bar; the nonsinging and dancing Munchkins who gathered to greet Dorothy in “The Wizard of Oz.”

Years ago, the awards committee tossed around names like the “Backie” — a nod to “background actor” — but it was the Blurry that stuck. After all, that’s what background actors are.

“It’s our job to be blurry. We don’t stand out,” said Vincent Amaya, chair of the awards committee, who has been a background actor for 17 years. “I get more work the blurrier I am. If I’m featured, I’m not on that show again, unless it’s as the same character.”

A smiling man in a dark suit stands in front of a backdrop.

The homegrown awards show subsists entirely on ticket sales, which range from $20 to $40, depending on the time of purchase — and the occasional donation — and has never turned a profit, he said. Regardless, the show goes on.

“It brings recognition to background actors,” said Amaya, who has helped run the event for years. “We need to show we are professionals, and we are needed.”

In some ways, the background actor awards are not unlike the efforts from other categories of actors, such as stunt performers, to demand more respect from the industry. And like many in Hollywood, background actors have faced a difficult last few years.

First, there was the COVID-19 pandemic, which shut down productions and limited acting opportunities. In 2023, they endured the dual writers’ and actors’ strikes, where many of them picketed alongside their more recognizable colleagues.

More recently, the Southern California fires destroyed homes and disrupted their livelihoods. Looming over everything is the constant stream of productions moving out of L.A. to other states and countries.

“I’m sure the locusts are on the way,” quipped show host Mike Siegel, a stand-up comedian who has hosted shows on HGTV and TBS, and poked fun at himself for his own anonymity.

But his onstage remarks quickly took a more serious tone.

“We’re celebrating people here who show up,” he said during his monologue. “Don’t let anyone demean what you do.”

A close-up of a hand near a golden statuette on a lectern

Unlike a typical awards show, the acceptance speeches didn’t include laundry lists of thank yous to studio heads. Instead, winners often thanked their fellow nominees or other crew members for helping them get jobs, reiterated the importance of their work or took the moment to address specific concerns for their profession.

For some, that starts with addressing the colloquial term for background actors — “extras” — which some bristle at.

“Can we please stop calling each other ‘extras’?” Karen Shelton Brown, who won for best female background actor, said during her acceptance speech. “I am not an extra. We all are actors.”

Harrigan, the lifetime achievement award recipient, called for a very public sign of respect: a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for background actors.

A man in a dark blazer and khaki pants stands at a lectern in front of a screen.

“We’ve been in front of the camera for over 100 years. But we’re not really recognized,” he said. “I know it sounds really weird … but, you know, stranger things have happened.”

Even that small piece of recognition would be a start for folks taking on such an unglamorous, anonymous role. Early morning call times, 14-hour days and performing in inclement weather are all part of the gig.

Wendy Alter, 65, remembered a five-day shoot on the set of the NBC drama “This Is Us,” where she and other actors filmed near a pool in Long Beach in 40-degree weather, while it was raining.

“It was absolutely freezing,” she said. The producers, crew and cast “were trying to be as good as they could to us, but it’s not easy.”

Originally from Beaumont, Texas, Alter first got into background acting to learn her way around L.A. and meet people. That was in 1998, and she has been doing it since. A full-time background actor, she spent six years with “This Is Us” and nine years on the sitcom “Modern Family,” where she also worked as a stand-in for Rico Rodriguez, who played Manny Delgado, and Ariel Winter, who starred as Alex Dunphy.

“I enjoy the aspect of watching the creation come through with actors and set dressing and our producers and just the whole aspect of this industry,” said Alter, who worked as an executive vice president of a jewelry store chain before coming to Hollywood. “Every day is like a new day; it’s never the same.”

Alter later presented the award for best male background actor, a title that rewarded the performer with a quiet but masterful presence, she said onstage, who helped create a world that was “genuine” and “alive.”

Nominees were judged on their professionalism by a secret committee that has, on average, more than 20 years of experience in background acting.

Past categories have included best time period look, an award for background actors who are older than 18 but whose youthful looks mean they can play teenagers (crucial for high school shows); and one for special ability, which can include any unique skill such as archery, juggling, bowling or a musical instrument. After all, every movie with a rock concert needs a drummer.

Last year, Scott Perry and his fellow background actors from the Disney+ “Star Wars” hit “The Mandalorian” won for best ensemble. In true showbiz fashion, the event’s bartender came out with the rest of the attendees to accept the award.

This year, Perry won for best featured background actor for his work in the sitcom “Night Court.” Though he didn’t utter a word, the chance to stand toe-to-toe with public defender Dan Fielding, played by actor John Larroquette, in front of a live studio audience was “unreal,” he told The Times.

“I’ve grown out my beard, so I’m a lot more distinct-looking … a lot less background-y,” he said, with a laugh, gesturing to the bushy salt-and-pepper facial hair that accentuated his black tuxedo. “When I do get hired, I’m actually featured a lot more often.”

Marketing and consulting work pays the bills for Perry, who is in his 50s, so background acting is his secondary gig. But he puts in the hours to improve his craft, taking classes at the SAG-AFTRA Los Angeles Conservatory and learning everything he can about the business.

He’s concerned about the future implications of artificial intelligence in production, but such technology — at least for now — is expensive. Background actors are a lot cheaper, he said. (In the most recent SAG-AFTRA contract, the union negotiated a provision to put guardrails on usage of digital replicas of actors, which included additional protections for background actors.)

A woman in a black and white dress speaks before a mic at a lectern

“Maybe that’s our salvation right now,” he said.

Despite the challenges, the mood at the awards show was congenial, with attendees shouting out to one another onstage, in the lobby and from their cars as they pulled into the parking lot. Winners such as Farrah Hines, 48, collected hugs along the theater’s stairs after receiving awards onstage.

Winning the Blurry for best female single-cam stand-in was especially meaningful for Hines, who said she commuted from Las Vegas to L.A. every week for four years to get acting work and maintain health insurance for her kids.

She got her start as a stand-in on the Tia and Tamera Mowry sitcom “Sister, Sister” in 1998 but eventually took a 15-year break from the business to raise a family. (Stand-ins substitute for actors to help the crew with lighting, camera blocking and other behind-the-scenes work so the shoot can stay on time and budget; stand-ins on multi-camera sitcoms will also deliver lines to see whether the jokes land as written.)

After her children grew into teenagers and she finalized her divorce, she chose to get back into acting. She’s a full-time stuntwoman, in addition to her stand-in work, which includes ABC procedural “High Potential” and a previous gig on Disney’s “Ahsoka,” standing in for Rosario Dawson. In February, she and her kids moved to Redondo Beach, ending her multi-hour weekly commutes.

“As long as I can stand up, I will stand in,” Hines said during her acceptance speech. The audience, free to make noise, applauded.

Business

In a first for the country, voters in Monterey Park ban data centers

Published

6 hours ago

June 3, 2026

Press Room

In a first for the country, voters in Monterey Park ban data centers

Residents of Monterey Park voted overwhelmingly to ban data centers on election day, making the San Gabriel Valley city the first in the nation to do so by public vote.

As of Wednesday, 86% of votes were in favor of Measure NDC, the city ban, according to the Los Angeles County registrar-recorder/county clerk.

Other cities and towns have passed moratoriums on data centers, as a wave of opposition sweeps the country. But the Monterey Park vote can only be overturned by another ballot measure, making it the most permanent data center ban in a jurisdiction.

Monterey Park’s City Council had already banned data centers by ordinance, after a proposed 247,000-square-foot data center met an outpouring of public anger and concern. The developer withdrew that plan.

That facility would have been less than 500 feet away from the nearest home, and would have used three times the electricity of the entire 60,000-person city. Residents said it would have caused noise and air pollution and driven up electricity rates.

“This ensures long-lasting protections for current and future generations,” Amy Wong, co-founder of the group San Gabriel Valley Progressive Action, said of the vote. “It means that future city councils cannot overturn a data center ban, even if data center developers wanted to spend money to fund pro-data center candidates.”

The measure had no formal opposition. The developer of the proposed facility, investment firm HMC StratCap, said it wouldn’t engage in the ballot fight when it withdrew in March.

The Data Center Coalition, an industry trade group, expressed disappointment in the vote.

“It sends a signal that the area is closed for business, both for data centers and for other significant economic development projects,” state policy director Khara Boender said.

“It deprives local residents of the opportunity to compete for jobs and investment, while also causing the area to relinquish substantial long-term economic investment, high-wage jobs, and critical tax revenue to neighboring areas or other states.”

SGV Progressive Action worked with hyperlocal groups including No Data Center Monterey Park to rally support for the measure.

The group is now focused on stopping data center proposals in the City of Industry and fighting a move by City of Industry, Santa Fe Springs, Vernon and City of Commerce to welcome data centers and other industry with fast-tracked permitting and tax incentives.

City of Industry, in the San Gabriel Valley, and Vernon, south of downtown L.A., are primarily industrial areas, each with around 300 permanent residents. They are employment centers, and tens of thousands of workers commute in daily.

There has been little vocal opposition to data centers among the few residents of these cities. Wong said the protest is primarily coming from the surrounding neighborhoods.

“If a data center gets built in City of Industry, residents across the region would bear the brunt of pollution and increased utility costs,” Wong said, noting that it is surrounded by 16 other cities and unincorporated communities.

Data center proposals have been limited in California compared to Virginia, Texas, Georgia, Illinois and Arizona, which sit at the center of a recent boom in hyperscaler facilities to power artificial intelligence.

California has the third-most data centers in the country, with 300, but high electricity rates, expensive land and regulatory hurdles mean that fewer, and smaller, facilities are currently planned than in other hotspots.

That doesn’t mean opposition hasn’t been fierce. In Coachella and Imperial County, residents are showing up in droves to protest local proposals.

In the San Gabriel Valley, Montebello, El Monte and Baldwin Park have all enacted temporary moratoriums, and Alhambra recently banned data centers as part of a zoning code update.

Wong said she hoped the ballot measure vote would galvanize the opposition. “The vote is a testament to the people power of our region,” she said. “Our region is worth protecting, and we won’t let data centers determine our future.”

Business

Rent-hike ban to protect fire victims ends despite gouging concerns

Published

16 hours ago

June 3, 2026

Press Room

Rent-hike ban to protect fire victims ends despite gouging concerns

A rule intended to prevent rent gouging in the wake of the Eaton and Palisades fires has lapsed in Los Angeles County, possibly exposing some renters to hikes.

The executive order that blocked rent increases was issued by Gov. Gavin Newsom amid the devastating wildfires last year. Under the order, landlords couldn’t increase rents by more than 10% above their prefire levels.

The rule, which was supposed to be temporary and was repeatedly extended, ended Friday after a vote to extend it again failed to garner enough votes. Supervisor Lindsey Horvath, whose district includes Pacific Palisades, sounded the alarm in a motion to extend price protections that failed to pass at the Board of Supervisors’ May 19 meeting.

“These price gouging protections continue to be necessary as construction and rebuilding continue, and as thousands of people remain displaced,” the motion said. “Families which signed short-term leases could face drastic price increases of 50% or more without further price gouging protection.”

Los Angeles County is home to more than 1 million rental properties, though not all of them needed protection from the new rule. There are already stricter rent increase caps for many residences, depending on the location, type and age of the building. Despite the rent control in the region, the people of Los Angeles pay among the highest rents in the country.

It is uncertain whether renters will face rapidly rising rents now that the protection has lapsed. But some real estate experts and policymakers said there was no need for the temporary rule that was part of the governor’s state of emergency.

Supervisors Kathryn Barger, Janice Hahn and Holly Mitchell abstained from voting on the motion to extend the protection, while Supervisors Hilda Solis and Horvath supported it.

“I abstained because I did not see sufficient evidence to justify extending this emergency ordinance, nor did I see evidence to eliminate it entirely,” Hahn said.

Barger’s office said she supported allowing the protections to sunset while waiting to see whether new information emerged.

“Market data already shows countywide rents are only about 2% above pre-emergency levels and rental inventory has grown,” Barger representative Helen E. Chavez Garcia said. “The Supervisor is also mindful of the burden these ongoing protections place on small property owners throughout the county.”

Mitchell did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

There haven’t been steep rent hikes in neighborhoods within three miles of the Palisades fire, according to a Times analysis of data from Zillow, the property listing company.

In ZIP Codes within three miles of the Palisades fire, rent increased 4.8% from December 2024 to April 2025. In areas around the Eaton fire, which destroyed swaths of Altadena, rent jumped 5.2% in the same period.

In L.A. County, ZIP Codes farther from the fires saw only about a 2% increase.

A landlords representative, Jesus Rojas of the Apartment Owners Assn. of Greater Los Angeles, told the supervisors during public comment at the meeting that the county’s rent-gouging rules have “long outlived the emergency they were intended to address” and are now being “wrongfully used to harm thousands of rental housing providers throughout the county.”

“There is no proof that multifamily rental housing providers are hugely increasing rents for impacted homeowners,” Rojas said.

Indeed, there are strong signs that the property market in the Los Angeles area has at last begun to cool.

L.A. metro-area rent prices recently fell to a four-year low, with the median rent slipping to $2,167 in December.

Meanwhile, condominium sales had their slowest start of the year in decades. Condo sales in Los Angeles have plummeted to a 20-year low, with fewer than 2,000 units sold in January and February — the worst start to the year since 2005.

Newsom defended the price-gouging protections shortly after they went into effect.

“In the days following the Los Angeles firestorms, we worked quickly to protect Los Angeles survivors from any form of exploitation,” he said in February 2025. “The state has the tools in place to not only block price gouging during this emergency, but also to prosecute bad actors.”

The Los Angeles County Department of Consumer and Business Affairs said it received more than 2,000 complaints after the fires, alleging that retailers and landlords were taking advantage of people put in hardship by their losses, and sent out more than 2,000 cease-and-desist letters to businesses and landlords for alleged price gouging, said Morine Merritt, who oversees department investigations into consumer and real estate fraud.

“Close to 90% of the complaints that we received involved allegations of rent increases,” Merritt said in an interview. Now that the fire-related protections have expired, existing laws and “regular market conditions determine price increases for goods and services, including rents,” she said.

Crackdowns on fire-related rent gouging have been rare, said Chelsea Kirk of the activist organization the Rent Brigade, which analyzed L.A. County’s rental market in the year after the fires. It reported 18,360 potential examples of price gouging in listings but said that few lawsuits had been filed by authorities so far.

Last week, Rent Brigade announced what it said was the first private civil lawsuit brought by a family that claimed to be rent-gouged in the aftermath of the wildfires. Plaintiffs Randall and Candy Renick, whose Altadena home was damaged, said they were charged nearly three times the maximum permitted rate for nearly 10 months. They seek restitution of $96,000 plus civil penalties and attorneys’ fees.

The rental market has probably stabilized since the fires, Kirk said, but other families may still be “locked into illegal rents” that they agreed to pay when they were in a rush to find housing after they were displaced.

Business

Read Nick Bilton’s Letter to Scott Pelley

Published

1 day ago

June 3, 2026

Press Room

Read Nick Bilton’s Letter to Scott Pelley

Dear Mr. Pelley:

I meant what I said in my letter last week to the 60 Minutes team: joining 60 Minutes is the honor of my career and I am grateful to be working alongside the people who have contributed to the most important television journalism brand this country has ever produced. While I’m new to 60 Minutes, I’ve devoted my career to investigative journalism and storytelling. I started this job excited to collaborate and to benefit from the wisdom and experience of the 60 Minutes veterans, with you among them. For that reason, one of the first things I did in my new role was call you to talk and invite you to dinner. It is a profound disappointment that you rejected that overture and chose ambush instead. Yesterday, you hijacked my first meeting with staff to disparage me, my qualifications, and my intentions with remarkable incivility and contempt. I welcome a diversity of viewpoints and respectful debate among the team, but this was nothing of the sort. Yesterday’s performative display of hostility enacted in front of the staff instead of in a civil, private conversation-demonstrated that you have no interest in contributing to the future success of the show, or approaching my new tenure with a mind open to collaboration and progress. I am here to deliver first-in-class news programming, not to make headlines about newsroom drama. I am eager to work alongside those who share this goal.

Despite yesterday’s misconduct, I had hoped that in sitting down with you today we could find a path forward together. You made clear that you are not interested in such a path.

Your antipathy to the future of the show has come through loud and clear. And I have heard you. I therefore write on behalf of CBS News, Inc. (“CBS”) to inform you that your employment with CBS is terminated for cause effective immediately. Enclosed is your formal termination letter.

Sincerely,

Nick Bilton

Executive Producer, 60 Minutes