Connect with us

Entertainment

Hollywood actors walk out over pay & AI worries

Published

on

Hollywood actors have announced they will join a strike by screenwriters in the industry’s biggest shutdown for more than 60 years.
Some 160,000 performers will stop work at midnight in Los Angeles, bringing to a halt most US film and TV productions.

The Screen Actors Guild (SAG) wants streaming giants to agree to a fairer split of profits and better working conditions.

It also wants to protect actors from being usurped by digital replicas.

The union is seeking guarantees that artificial intelligence (AI) and computer-generated faces and voices will not be used to replace actors.

While the strike lasts, actors cannot appear in films or even promote movies that they have already made.

As a result, stars Cillian Murphy, Matt Damon and Emily Blunt left the premiere of Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer in London on Thursday night as the strike was declared.

The film’s director, Christopher Nolan, told the cinema audience that they were “off to write their picket signs”, adding that he supported them in their struggle.

Several actors took to Instagram to voice their support for the strike, including Better Call Saul star Bob Odenkirk, Sex and the City’s Cynthia Nixon and Hollywood veteran Jamie Lee Curtis.

Picketing will begin on Friday morning outside the California headquarters of Netflix, before moving on to Paramount, Warner Bros and Disney.

To address concerns about the use of AI, the big studios have offered what they call a “ground-breaking proposal” that would protect the digital likeness of actors and require their consent when digital replicas are used in performances, or alterations are made.

But the union rejected the offer, made by the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP).

The SAG’s national executive director and chief negotiator, Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, said it was unacceptable.

“They propose that our background performers should be able to be scanned, get paid for one day’s pay, and their company should own that scan of their image, their likeness, and should be able to use it for the rest of eternity,” he said. “If you think that’s a ground-breaking proposal, I suggest you think again.”

For films in production, the strike means a large portion of work will become impossible. Even in cases in which filming has already been completed, actors will be unavailable for re-shoots and other essential elements of the filmmaking process.

TV shows that are still being filmed will also largely have to stop, although in some cases side deals could be struck between performers and producers to allow work to continue.

Top Hollywood stars will not be able to attend events to promote new and upcoming releases. Events including the Emmys and Comic-Con may be rescheduled or scaled back.

The AMPTP said the strike was “certainly not the outcome we hoped for as studios cannot operate without the performers that bring our TV shows and films to life”.

“The union has regrettably chosen a path that will lead to financial hardship for countless thousands of people who depend on the industry,” its statement added.

The union is officially known as the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, or SAG-AFTRA.

Another of its demands of the streaming services is that actors should receive greater base pay and residuals – meaning payments made to actors from repeats of films and programmes they’ve starred in.

The strike includes tens of thousands of actors who receive significantly less pay for minor parts than their A-list colleagues.

“In the old model, they get residuals based on success,” Kim Masters, the editor-in-chief of the Hollywood Reporter, told the BBC. “In the new model, they don’t get to find out what’s going on behind the scenes, because the streamers don’t share.”

Fran Drescher, SAG’s president, said the strike came at a “very seminal moment” for actors in the industry.

“What’s happening to us is happening across all fields of labour,” she said, “when employers make Wall Street and greed their priority, and they forget about the essential contributors that make the machine run.”

A separate strike by the 11,500 members of the Writers Guild of America demanding better pay and working conditions has been going since 2 May.

Some writers have turned to projects that are not covered by the contract between the guild and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers.

The “double strike” by both unions is the first since 1960, when the SAG was led by actor Ronald Reagan, long before he entered politics and became US president. The last strike by actors took place in 1980.

peaking during a gathering of industry leaders at an Idaho resort ahead of the SAG’s announcement on Thursday, Disney chief executive Bob Iger said the demands of both actors and writers were impractical and damaging to an industry still recovering from the pandemic.

“It’s very disturbing to me,” Mr Iger said. “This is the worst time in the world to add to that disruption.”

A third union, the Directors Guild of America, successfully negotiated a contract in June and will not participate.

(BBC News)

Entertainment

M*A*S*H actress Loretta Swit dies aged 87

Published

on

By

Loretta Swit, who won two Emmy awards for her role on the popular comedy TV series M*A*S*H, died on Friday, according to her representative.

She died at her home in New York at age 87, her publicist Harlan Boll told the BBC. She likely died of natural causes, although a coroner’s report is pending.

On M*A*S*H, Swit played US Army nurse Major Margaret “Hot Lips” Houlihan. The series, which followed a mobile Army surgical hospital during the Korean war, ran for 11 seasons from 1972 to 1983.

Swit was nominated for numerous awards, and appeared in nearly every episode of the series, including the finale which attracted a record 106m US viewers.

The show remains one of the most successful and acclaimed series in US television history. Its season finale was the most watched episode of any TV series in history when it ended in 1983.

As “Hot Lips,” Swit played a tough but vulnerable Army nurse who gained the nickname after having an affair with Major Frank Burns, who was played by Larry Linville.

The show used comedy and pranks to tackle tough issues like racism, sexism and the impacts of PTSD within the military, at a time when US forces were withdrawing from Vietnam and dealing with the consequences of that conflict.

It was based on the 1968 book, “MASH: A Novel About Three Army Doctors,” penned by a former Army surgeon.

Swit was born Loretta Szwed in New Jersey and trained at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City.

Along with M*A*S*H, she also appeared in numerous other TV shows, movies and even game shows over her career.

She took to the Broadway stage in plays including Same Time, Next Year; Mame; and Shirley Valentine – a role for which she won Chicago’s top theatre prize, the Sarah Siddons Award.

Her TV work included appearances on The Muppet Show, Mission: Impossible and Murder, She Wrote.

In addition to her Emmys, Swit was nominated for four Golden Globe awards.

“Acting is not hiding to me, it’s revealing. We give you license to feel,” she said in an interview with the Star magazine in 2010. “That’s the most important thing in the world, because when you stop feeling, that’s when you’re dead.”

Speaking to an author about her character on M*A*S*H she said: “Around the second or third year, I decided to try to play her as a real person, in an intelligent fashion, even if it meant hurting the jokes. … She was a character in constant flux; she never stopped developing.”

Swit was also an artist and animal rights activist, and established a charity to campaign against animal cruelty, according to a statement from her publicist Mr Boll.

Jamie Farr, who also starred in M*A*S*H as Corporal Klinger, called Swit his “adopted sister”.

“From the first time I met her, on what was supposed to be a one-day appearance on M*A*S*H, we embraced each other and that became a lifetime friendship,” Farr said in a statement. “I can’t begin to express how much she will be missed.”

(BBC News)

Continue Reading

Entertainment

Anudi makes history at Miss World Multimedia challenge

Published

on

By

Anudi Gunasekara has made history for Sri Lanka by clinching the title of First Runner-Up from Asia in the Miss World Multimedia challenge at the 72nd Miss World Festival held in Telangana, India.

This places her in the global Top 20 and earned her a position among the Top 8 winners worldwide -an unprecedented feat for a Sri Lankan contestant.

It was also Sri Lanka’s first-ever placement in the Top 20 of three Miss World fast-track events: Talent, Head-to-Head Challenge, and Multimedia.

Continue Reading

Entertainment

Deborra-Lee Furness describes ‘betrayal’ amid Hugh Jackman divorce

Published

on

By

Australian actress Deborra-Lee Furness has said her “compassion goes out to everyone who has traversed the traumatic journey of betrayal”, after filing for divorce from her husband Hugh Jackman.

In a statement released to media, Furness, 69, said: “It’s a profound wound that cuts deep, however I believe in a higher power and that God/the universe… is always working FOR us.”

The couple filed for divorce in New York on 23 May. They announced their separation in September 2023 after 27 years of marriage.

Hugh Jackman, best known for playing Wolverine in the X-men film series, has not responded directly to Furness’s statement.

Furness said that she had gained “much knowledge and wisdom” from the “breakdown” of her marriage to Jackman, 56.

“Sometimes the universe has to create arduous circumstances for us to walk through in order to find our way home, back to our true essence and the sovereignty of self love.”

“It can hurt, but in the long run, returning to yourself and living within your own integrity, values and boundaries is liberation and freedom,” she added, in the statement first issued to the Daily Mail.

When Furness and Jackman announced their separation in 2023, the couple issued a joint statement which they said was “the sole statement either of us will make”.

“Our journey now is shifting and we have decided to separate to pursue our individual growth… We undertake this next chapter with gratitude, love and kindness,” they said at the time.

The pair met on the set of the Australian TV show Corelli in 1995, shortly after Jackman had left drama school.

They married the following year and later adopted two children.

Since Furness issued the statement, Jackman, currently performing in New York, posted a video to Instagram in which he is skipping to the NYSNC song Bye Bye Bye.

(BBC News)

Continue Reading

Trending

Copyright © 2024 Sri Lanka Mirror. All Rights Reserved