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In Hollywood, No One Gets a Casting Call for This Role


By: Barbara Whitaker
New York Times, March 12, 2002

 

S'WONDERFUL Bonnie Bartlett, who says an actor's life "is both wonderful and sad," is still busy on a TV series

 

LOS ANGELES -- AT 62, in good health and the roles still coming, Cary Grant stepped into the wings of retirement. Loretta Young made the move at 50. Jessica Tandy seemed not to know the meaning of the word.

In Hollywood, there are no definite rules about when to retire, how to retire or what to do in retirement.

"When you're Cary Grant and you begin to be older and don't fit Cary Grant anymore, I suppose you think of retirement," said Nehemiah Persoff, 82, who, over a career of nearly six decades, performed in 18 Broadway plays, numerous films and 400 television shows. "I was always a character actor and there was no particular mold I had to fit into.

"You just keep going until the industry doesn't call you anymore," continued Mr. Persoff, who has moved to Cambria, a bucolic town about four hours north of Los Angeles, where he spends much of his time painting.

The nature of acting — the irregularity of work — means that even the most successful actors spend their careers in a virtually suspended state of retirement, never knowing when the next job will come or what it will be.

"An actor's life is both wonderful and sad," said Bonnie Bartlett, an actress whose career has included a role on the soap opera "Love of Life" in her early years, Broadway plays and appearing opposite her husband, William Daniels, in the television series "St. Elsewhere" in the 1980's.

Ms. Bartlett, who is in her early 70's, is working on the current show "Once and Again." She recalled a conversation with the daughter of Claude Rains, who said what she remembered most about her father was his waiting for the telephone to ring.

"It happens to everybody," Ms. Bartlett said.

In a place where youth is idolized, relatively few actors can sustain careers that will guarantee pensions.

The Screen Actors Guild, with some 98,000 members, has about 8,000 pensioners, including beneficiaries of those deceased. To qualify for that pension, an actor must make $10,000 a year over any five years of his or her career, which may not sound like much until you consider that in 2001, for example, about 69,000 of the guild's members made $1,000 or less. (Pensions through other unions, however, are also available to actors.) In addition, the Motion Picture and Television Fund, a charitable organization, operates a retirement complex in Woodland Hills, Calif., for people who worked in the entertainment industry.

As opportunities for acting parts diminish for older actors, sustaining an acting career becomes even more difficult. "The television and film industry has a particular attitude about seniors, which I and my group resent," said Peter Mark Richman, 74, the chairman of the Screen Actors Guild's seniors committee.

Mr. Richman said that about 65 percent of the jobs on prime-time television went to actors who were 25 to 40 years old, while only about 6 percent of the characters on television are over 60. (One potent fact: Americans over 50 represent 25 percent of the population in the United States, according to the census bureau.)

Although his chiseled good looks have helped him keep alive a career over five decades, Mr. Richman said that it was becoming harder each year.

"You might say I'm one of the lucky ones," he said. "I've had a successful career and I'm grateful. I refuse to think that it's over. But the industry keeps giving me unsubtle hints that it is."

Even for those who are lucky enough to make acting their livelihood, it is not always a straight career path.

In her 20's and 30's, Melody Rae supported herself in theater and commercial work in the Midwest, landing a few roles in films, including "The Untouchables" in 1987. (She was the lady pushing the baby carriage that rolls in slow motion down the steps of Union Station of Chicago, mimicking a famous scene from the film "The Battleship Potemkin.")

But, she said, casting agents invariably told her the same thing: they wished she were older.

"Even in high school, in `Anastasia,' I was the grande dame, rather than Anastasia. I was the older woman, the mom, the quirky aunt.

"I kept waiting to get older," she said. "I used a minimum of sunblock. I wouldn't color my hair."

At 39, she moved to Los Angeles and won television and stage roles, but her career still did not take off. A friend who was a teacher encouraged her to try that career.

"One of those kids climbed in my lap, put her arms around my neck and that was it," she said.

FOR the time being, she is teaching fifth grade at a public elementary school in Los Angeles, but intending to make another run at acting in 10 years or so. "That's what my retirement is going to be," she said. "I'll retire from teaching to be an actor again."

As she grows older, however, there will be a significant hurdle to confront because Hollywood's love affair with youth runs even deeper with women.

According to a 1998 survey by the Screen Actors Guild, the number of female actors who were working peaked at 14,407 in the 30- to 39-year-old category, declined to 10,882 for women in their 40's, before dropping precipitously to just over 5,300 for women in their 50's; 2,448 in their 60's; and 1,563 in their 70's. By contrast, the survey reported that there were 17,202 men working in their 30's; 15,651 in their 40's; 9,157 in their 50's; 5,105 in their 60's; and 2,888 in their 70's.

"The roles do get fewer and farther between," said Rebeccah Bush, the chairwoman of the guild's women's committee. She says that on television, female characters represent 39 percent of the characters, with 38 percent of those roles being essential to plot development.

Ms. Bush, whose work includes portraying the actress Florence Henderson in the television movie "Growing Up Brady" and appearances on "Frasier," "E.R." and "Jake and the Fatman," says she is beginning to see a slowdown in the number of roles being offered, but she is not willing to sit quietly by.

She has begun producing, which will help her, she thinks, have an effect on what is being made. In putting together her first short film, she said, she is deliberately hiring experienced older actors.

Mr. Richman took a similar tack through writing, appearing in and co-producing "4 Faces," a film about four crises in which the average age of actors on the set was 78 — for the important roles. Mr. Persoff played one of them. "It's a very sore subject — how the industry treats seniors," said Mr. Richman, who has appeared in numerous films and hundreds of television shows, from "Bonanza" in the 60's to "Beverly Hills 90210" in the 90's. "They have the perception that all seniors are doddering idiots. To be 70 you might as well be interred."

While Ms. Bartlett is going strong, her husband, Mr. Daniels, 74, is finishing an intense two-year stint as president of the Screen Actors Guild and is happy to be off-camera. He fusses around the garden of their home in Montecito, an exclusive neighborhood in Santa Barbara, reading or meeting friends for breakfast, while "running around like a nut."

When shooting for "Once and Again," Ms. Bartlett is out the door by 6 a.m. and not home until 7 p.m. She serves on guild committees and is an active supporter of a Santa Barbara ballet company.

"I have a very voracious appetite," she said, "but I try to say to myself, `Do you have the energy to do this? You're getting older, lady.' "

Realities set in. Ms. Bartlett tells the story of a great actress who, her speech impaired by a stroke, looked for ways to continue to work, saying, "I'll be like Marcel Marceau."

"I think she was half-joking and half-serious," Ms. Bartlett said. "But that's the thing about acting — it's half-tragic, half-comic."

 


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