Older Adults in Demand as Movie Extras

The Royal Oak, Mich., couple have been film extras for two years, ever since a cadre of uniformed soldiers and giant tanks marked with Russian symbols came through their neighborhood to shoot the movie Red Dawn. Neither had acting experience — Cindy, 56, is a freelance writer, and Doug, 57, is into architecture and photography — and both loved movies. They asked a neighbor for referrals to a casting agency and joined the Red Dawn cast and crew for the next nine days. They now earn from $7 an hour up to $100 a day plus meals.

"We've played wedding guests, medical professionals, foreign diplomats, suburban parents and homeless refugees," Cindy writes in her blog, Cindy La Ferle's Home Office. "We've run from explosions and steered our cars through crash scenes. We've belted out hymns in church. We've nursed fake cocktails at formal receptions."

Great work ethic

Opportunities to work as extras like the La Ferles are spreading across the nation as states such as Michigan, Georgia and New Mexico beckon Hollywood producers with tax credits of up to 40 percent of movie-making costs. State film offices offer directors a growing infrastructure of casting directors to meet their demands for capable background performers and great filming locations.

Older adults also are in high demand by casting agents. "They show up dressed for the part, they pay attention, they don't complain," says Kathryn Brink, 55, owner of Kathryn Brink Casting in Albuquerque, N.M., who recruits scores of older people for movies made in New Mexico, Colorado and Texas.

You'll find these extras in roaring stadium crowds in the film The Blind Side or in the back of a bordello in the movie Love Ranch. Generally extras don't speak, sing or dance, but they can stand in for a star while a camera angle is adjusted or appear in the background of scenes.

Terri Becherer, director of the background actors department for the Screen Actors Guild in Los Angeles, says about 150,000 people play background roles in movies and television each year. About 22,990 are SAG members who make a career out of it. But it's not necessarily all fun and games. "Hundreds of new people join and others leave, disillusioned when they find they aren't getting enough jobs and set work is tough work," Becherer says.

Next: How to be an extra. >>