Longlisted for the 2022 Kraszna-Krausz Book Award, Moving Image Category

Despite their considerable presence in Hollywood, extras and working actors have received scant attention within film and media studies as significant contributors to the history of the industry. Looking not to the stars but to these supporting players in film, television, and, recently, streaming programming, Below the Stars highlights such actors as precarious laborers whose work as freelancers has critically shaped the entertainment industry throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. By addressing ordinary actors as a labor force, Kate Fortmueller proposes a media industry history that positions underrepresented and quotidian experiences as the structural elements of the culture and business of Hollywood.

Resisting a top-down assessment, Fortmueller explores the wrangling of labor unions and guilds that advocated for collective action for everyday actors and helped shape professional norms. She pulls from archival research, in-person interviews, and firsthand observation to examine a history that cuts across industry boundaries and situates actors as a labor group at the center of industrial and technological upheavals, with lasting implications for race, gender, and labor relations in Hollywood.

List of Abbreviations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1. Hollywood Freelance: How Actors and Extras Shaped the Film Industry
Chapter 2. Actors and the Making of Television’s First Golden Age
Chapter 3. Reuse and Replace? Actors, Reruns, and the Cable Era
Chapter 4. New Media, Old Labor Conflicts: Voice Actors and Digital Professionalization
Conclusion
Postscript. Actors and COVID-19: What the Pandemic Teaches Us about Film and Television Labor
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index