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

A Year Later, Trump’s ‘Most Exclusive’ Memecoin Event Is a Lot Less Exclusive

Published

5 hours ago

April 25, 2026

Press Room

A Year Later, Trump’s ‘Most Exclusive’ Memecoin Event Is a Lot Less Exclusive

But few of his crypto actions have attracted as much attention or scrutiny as his memecoin.

Unveiled three nights before the presidential inauguration in January 2025, $TRUMP emerged from a partnership between Mr. Trump and a longtime associate, the serial entrepreneur Bill Zanker. When the coins went on sale, the Trump family and its business partners collected a fee on each transaction, totaling at least $320 million in the first few months.

Last April, the coin’s backers tried to drive more sales by inviting investors to compete for 220 seats at an “intimate private dinner” with Mr. Trump at the Virginia golf club. In effect, the contest gave crypto traders and even foreign investors a way to funnel money into the Trump family’s coffers, with no public disclosure requirements.

The night of the event, protesters gathered near the club, led by Senator Jeff Merkley, Democrat of Oregon, who called it “the Mount Everest of corruption.” Inside, Mr. Trump railed against the Biden administration as investors dined on filet mignon and “Trump organic field green salad.”

The president appeared undeterred by the backlash. This year, he hosted an even bigger contest.

On March 12, the $TRUMP coin’s official X account announced plans for the conference at Mar-a-Lago, featuring Mr. Trump as a lunchtime speaker alongside Mike Tyson, the former heavyweight champion, and Paolo Ardoino, who runs the crypto firm Tether. Attendees were also promised Trump-branded perfume, a commemorative Trump poster, a collectible Trump trading card and a “red beauty watch” emblazoned with the president’s name.

The contest’s rules were convoluted. For every coin purchased, investors would receive a point on a public leaderboard. Every hour the investors held onto those funds, another point would be awarded for each coin, a system designed to discourage anyone from selling. The contest was slated to end on April 10, with the top 297 investors earning spots at Mar-a-Lago; the top 29 would also get access to a smaller reception with Mr. Trump.

Business

Why Meta is laying off 10% of its workforce

Published

6 hours ago

April 25, 2026

Press Room

Why Meta is laying off 10% of its workforce

Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, is planning to lay off 8,000 employees, or roughly 10% of its workforce, in May, as it seeks to cut costs to better prepare to do more with artificial intelligence.

Meta told its employees about the layoffs in a Thursday memo that said the company will also close 6,000 open roles. Bloomberg earlier reported about the memo.

Meta is among tech companies that have cut thousands of workers since 2022 after going on a hiring spree during the COVID-19 pandemic. From restructuring to AI investments, tech executives have cited various reasons for layoffs.

Amazon, Snap, Block and other tech companies have continued to slash their workforces this year, flooding the competitive job market with more talent. From January to March, tech companies announced 52,050 layoffs, up 40% from the same period last year, according to outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

Here’s what you need to know about the latest cuts expected at Meta:

A woman tries Meta smart glasses during the annual White House Easter Egg Roll on the South Lawn of the White House on April 6.

(Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)

How is Meta doing financially?

Meta has been growing its digital ads business and is expected to outpace its rivals this year, becoming the world’s top player in digital ads. Emarketer estimates that the company’s global net ad revenue will reach $243.46 billion in 2026, surpassing Google’s projected $239.54 billion for the first time.

The company is spending heavily on artificial intelligence and new hardware such as smartglasses. In 2025, Meta’s full-year net income was roughly $60 billion, a 3% decline compared to 2024.

Meta is doing better than many in the industry, but still slashing headcount for many types of jobs. Its rival Snap, reported a net loss of $460 million last year and is laying off 16% of its workforce. Snap is cutting 247 workers at its Santa Monica headquarters and 73 at its Palo Alto office, according to filings last week with the California Employment Development Department.

Why is Meta cutting more jobs?

Meta told employees the cuts are part of the company’s efforts to become more efficient and offset investments.

“This is not an easy tradeoff and it will mean letting go of people who have made meaningful contributions to Meta during their time here,” Janelle Gale, chief people officer at Meta said in the memo to staff.

Reports of upcoming layoffs were leaked, prompting Meta to inform employees about the cuts this week.

“I know this is unwelcome news and confirming this puts everyone in an uneasy state, but we feel this is the best path forward, given the circumstances,” the memo stated.

Reuters reported in March that layoffs could impact 20% or more of the company because Meta is trying to offset the cost of its AI investments. The company is also encouraging workers to become more efficient by using AI tools to do tasks such as code.

Meta Chief Executive and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg is reportedly building an AI clone of himself. And Zuckerberg said in 2025 that he thought AI will be able to write code like a mid-level engineer.

Construction at the Beaver Dam Commerce Park

But the company is also facing other challenges that could increase its expenses, analysts say. That includes lawsuits accusing the company of harming the mental health of young people and more regulations that could restrict the use of social media.

In March, the company lost lawsuits in California and New Mexico that involved child safety. In one case, a Los Angeles jury found that Meta and YouTube were negligent for designing addictive features that harmed the mental health of a California woman. Meta plans to appeal, adding to its legal expenses.

Family of the victims speak to press after hearing the verdict outside the Los Angeles Superior Court

Meanwhile, U.S. adults are expected to spend less time on Facebook next year. On Instagram, it’s expected to grow slightly, according to eMarketer.

“Meta is really at a sort of crossroads moment, even though its business is doing well,” said Minda Smiley, a senior analyst at eMarketer who focuses on social media.

Meta shares are basically unchanged so far this year and last traded around $660 on Thursday. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index is up around 5% over the same period.

Has Meta cut thousands of jobs before?

Yes, Meta has cut thousands of workers several times in the past, but pointed to different reasons for the cuts.

In 2022 and 2023, the company slashed more than 20,000 roles during its “year of efficiency.” Several tech companies were cutting back after hiring during the pandemic.

Last year, Meta slashed 3,600 jobs, saying the cuts were performance-based, though some workers pushed back against that characterization.

Then in January, the company said it was cutting more than 1,000 workers and closing several content studios as it focuses more on the development of smartglasses. The cuts hit Meta’s Reality Labs division, where employees work on the metaverse, digital spaces where people socialize, work and learn.

Meta laid off engineers, recruiters, product managers and other workers in its California offices, filings to a state government agency showed.

As of December, Meta had nearly 79,000 workers.

Business

Iran’s Meme War Against Trump Ushers In a Future of ‘Slopaganda’

Published

17 hours ago

April 25, 2026

Press Room

Iran’s Meme War Against Trump Ushers In a Future of ‘Slopaganda’

Iran’s success in spreading these memes has surprised experts who study foreign influence operations. They say the tactics and technology on display during the war will almost certainly be replicated in other international crises, as well as major political events, including the looming elections in the United States.

“It’s spoken to the sort of Gen Z language of the internet in ways certainly diplomats don’t normally do,” said Bret Schafer, a senior director at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, an international nonprofit that has tracked Iran’s activity.

“They have taken a regime that is, I mean, brutal and pretty awful and didn’t have exactly a great global reputation and turned them into kind of a plucky, fun underdog.”

Dozens of accounts belonging to Iranian government officials and diplomats have peppered their social feeds with a previously uncharacteristic edge, reposting biting videos that mock the United States and Israel.

They portray Mr. Trump as an imperialist out for blood or as an incompetent lackey of Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, often stoking antisemitic tropes. They regularly suggest the war was launched to distract from the disclosures in the Jeffrey Epstein files.

Collectively, the posts by roughly 150 official Iranian accounts gained about 900 million views over the first 50 days of the war, a thirtyfold increase from the same period before, according to an analysis published on Thursday by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue.

“They’re talking in a way that’s fundamentally changed,” said Moustafa Ayad, another researcher at the institute. “If you go back two months and look at what they were putting out, it’s nothing like this.”

Propaganda is always adapting, reflecting the era in which it is made. Iran’s deft use of technology, experts say, has highlighted a new era of meme warfare that expands the information battlefield by using the algorithmic engines of social media to undermine an adversary’s political support. The new tactic has been called “slopaganda.”

Iran’s effort, the institute’s analysis concluded, “offers a blueprint that authoritarian actors can replicate in the future.”

The Meme War

The number of posts from Iranian Consulate accounts that included memes, jokes or A.I.-generated content skewering the United States or Israel has risen sharply in recent weeks as the online meme war intensified.

Note: Includes Iranian Consulate accounts with more than 20,000 followers on X. Source: TweetBinder by Audiense. The New York Times

Of all memes posted by the Iranians, none have resonated as much as a series of videos featuring Legos. A small team of content creators in Iran has turned the globally recognized toy, which has its own movie franchise, into one of the most potent weapons in the meme arsenal.

In the videos, a character resembling Mr. Trump sweats or cowers. Iranian soldiers and civilians, by contrast, are cast as resolute in the face of the combined military might of the United States and Israel.

The people behind them call themselves Explosive Media — or, as they put it in their biography on TikTok, simply the “Iranian Lego team.” They have used artificial intelligence tools to generate short videos with the toy figurines manipulated to resemble Mr. Trump, Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Satan, an Iranian epithet for the United States for decades now.

They have posted mostly on YouTube, but they also have accounts on Instagram, X, Telegram and, since last week, Facebook. They have inspired a virtual army of imitators.

The group was founded during the 12-day war between Israel and Iran last year. They call the series of videos “Victory Chronicles,” which in Persian shares a name with the Revayat-e Fath Institute, a cultural center in Tehran sponsored by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.

That has led some news accounts to link them to the government, but a representative, reached through Facebook, said the team, with fewer than 10 members, operated independently. They have sold the broadcasting rights in Iran, including to state news agencies, the representative said.

A spokesman for Iran’s mission at the United Nations declined to comment about the country’s messaging online.

Explosive Media

A.I.-generated videos from Explosive Media, an Iranian group, depict world leaders as Lego characters.

Pay attention to the sermons Pete Fiction

@PeteHegseth

Views 331.1k

The veil is thinning.
Good. Evil.

Time is running out.
Choose your side.

RISE UP!

Views 397.6k

Note: Videos edited for length.

In the United States, the videos have tapped into opposition from the war’s critics on the left, but also on the right.

Renee DiResta, an associate research professor at Georgetown University who has long studied digital influence operations, attributed the widespread popularity of the Lego videos to the creators’ “incredible cultural fluency.”

They use rap songs. They refer to familiar tropes, like Mr. Trump’s love of Diet Coke or criticism of Mr. Hegseth’s drinking habits. And they are extremely topical, responding to events as they happen, as recently as Mr. Vance’s postponed trip to Pakistan for peace talks on Tuesday.

Today’s rapidly evolving technology has enabled them to create longer, scripted animations. They transform the horror of war into the realm of child’s play, depicting the violence in a sanitized way that does not necessarily repel potential viewers in the space where most are watching: social media.

“They managed to hit on all of the identity-culture aesthetics that the internet is really there for,” Ms. DiResta said. “It’s kind of immediately graspable.”

The Lego Group, based in Denmark, did not respond to a request for comment about the use of its product in wartime propaganda.

The White House also declined to respond to specific questions about Iran’s propaganda, including the president’s response to the mocking Lego memes and whether the administration had taken any steps to respond. A spokeswoman, Anna Kelly, instead questioned in an email why anyone would call “terrorist regime propaganda” effective.

The Trump administration arguably started the meme war.

It has long shown a penchant of turning political issues into memes that it spreads on official and unofficial accounts. Since the first strikes on Feb. 28, a team in the White House has posted numerous videos using images generated by A.I. or spliced with clips from action movies and video games like Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto.

After a slow start when the war began, Iran responded in kind. Many of its memes have been produced in Iran, including the Lego videos, though not all, according to the researchers who have tracked them.

The videos are obviously animations, not deepfakes of attacks that can be debunked and thus defused, as false reports of downing jets and sinking aircraft carriers have been.

Iran’s spread of memes has largely not been restricted on social media, despite the platforms’ policies against inauthentic amplification and deceptive or excessively violent images.

X, owned by Elon Musk, has been one of the biggest outlets for Iranian propaganda, much of it spread by the country’s government agencies and diplomatic outposts around the world that have paid for X’s blue check for paid users. X did not respond to a request for comment.

Explosive Media’s accounts on Instagram and YouTube were taken down in March, though the one on Instagram was restored because it did not violate the platform’s policies, according to Meta, Instagram’s parent company. YouTube said in a statement that the account there had violated rules against deceptive practices, which apply to coordinated foreign influence campaigns.

In a measure of the campaign’s perceived value to the Iranian government, a spokesman for its Foreign Ministry, Esmaeil Baqaei, posted a rebuke on X. He called YouTube’s ban an effort to “shield the American administration’s false narrative from any competing voice.”

The popularity of the Lego videos has inspired efforts to fight fire with fire.

Charlie Curran, a 35-year-old filmmaker in Hollywood, was distressed by the shooting down of an F-15E jet in Iran, which prompted a frantic American search for the two surviving crew members. In response, he made a video in the Iranian style, depicting the rescue of one of them.

“I saw this all taking place and happening,” he said in an interview, referring to Iran’s memes, “and I was like, how is there no American response to this?”

Fighting Back

Charlie Curran, an American filmmaker, created his own response to Iranian videos featuring Lego characters.

Rescuing American Pilot in Iran (2026, colorized)

Views 804.4k

Note: Video edited for length.

Mr. Curran said he had embraced the potential of A.I. in filmmaking. He used Anthropic’s Claude to write a script and Seedance 2.0, the video generator from China’s ByteDance, which drew international attention recently for generating a simulation of Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt brawling on a roof.

It took 30 minutes, he said, to make his 72-second video. Since he posted it on X on April 7, it has been seen more than 800,000 times. It has also been shared across other platforms, with and without credit, and seen by millions more.

“It’s not inherently difficult,” Mr. Curran said, “which is why I think you’ll see a lot more of this.”