A day in the life of a television extra

Published on Friday 31 July 2009 14:51

ARE you a heavy-set woman who can ride a bike and doesn't mind being sworn at? If so, there could be a job for you – it's all in a day's work for film and TV extras

LOCATION: somewhere in windswept Linlithgow, some time in 1989. Myself and a long-forgotten friend arrive in town to audition as extras in a forthcoming Mel Gibson movie. No, not Braveheart; that was to come later. This was for the hirsute Australian's vision of Hamlet, which was to be shot at, among other places, Dunnottar Castle, in Aberdeenshire, and nearby Blackness.

My memory, much like Gibson's back, is a bit fuzzy now, but I seem to remember hanging around a lot, having my Polaroid taken, hanging around a bit more, then being informed my services would not be required, thank you very much. So why did I – and others like me – bother in the first place? Was it for the nanoseconds of fame we might have achieved? The appeal of being on the same square mile of sodden moor as a bona fide movie star? The lights, cameras and unadulterated film-set glamour, or just an escape from an otherwise humdrum office existence?

It was none of the above for 18-year-old Erin-Cait Gannon, who recently spent hours in a Glasgow ditch in the dead of night to play a corpse in Taggart. "That was really good; a great experience," she says cheerfully. "I had to lie there for about 45 minutes and hold my breath for as long as I could. The day after, I was on a mortuary slab – that was really cold. But at least I didn't have to be naked – I had underwear on underneath a blanket and just had to lie still."

The professional dancer now lives in London, but whenever she comes home to Cumbernauld she picks up bits of work and makes a little cash in the process. "The average rate is about 80 for a day, working from about 8am until 6pm or 7pm, so there's a lot of waiting around. But you get good banter with the other people. We all socialise together.

"I started doing it about two years ago," she adds. "I've been in River City and a few films – I was in Doomsday, and did New Town Killers with Dougray Scott. We were in a nightclub scene and I had to dance. Then later, Dougray gave up his chair for me – he was a really lovely bloke."

David Cohen, a psychologist and author of The Development of Play, has also worked in film and knows better than most what lies behind the desire to be an extra. "There is a sad lot of aspiring actors who think they will be told to say, 'Good morning,' and they will deliver their one line in such a brilliant way that they will be 'discovered'," he says. "Then there are others who are out of work for whatever reason and are simply bored. We're entering a period where unemployment is likely to rise and a number of people will no doubt turn to working as an extra in the hope that they'll be discovered as a great actor.

"The money's not bad," he adds. "I've known people who have done it for the money, and you get a good meal. You might even get to meet somebody who's interesting."

But make no mistake, being an extra is largely about waiting, and it could barely be less glamorous. "Somebody may go into it thinking it's going to be a lot of excitement, but anybody who has done it more than three times and still thinks that probably needs their head examined."

However, rubbing shoulders with celebrities is not what drives Gordon Spy to work as an extra. Nor is it a warm lunch. "I do it more for fun than anything else," says the 45-year-old independent financial adviser from Glasgow. "And to get my picture on the television.

"The first role I went for was as a referee in an Irn Bru advert. I only had to wave a card in the air, and everybody about me was to be naked. So I turned up for the audition in my suit, surrounded by all these big, hairy guys. The casting director came in and said, 'Can everybody get behind there and take their clothes off?' and I'm thinking, 'Now I understand the no-nudity clause actors have.' Needless to say, I didn't get the part.

"Then I went for a part in River City. I played a journalist and had to stand outside a close along with four or five others, waiting for a widow to come out so we could hassle her about her dead husband. They said, 'Just act like a journalist' – whatever that means – so I came up with the line, 'I'm only trying to do my job.' But the next time they shot the scene, I couldn't believe it – one of the other extras had stolen my line!"

Other roles have included playing former First Minister Jack McConnell in a party political broadcast. "It was just ten minutes but, honestly, extras would cut their arms off for that. The clip is still on YouTube. My son took it into school for his modern studies class, and they all had a laugh at it. I believe Jack found it funny too."

Then he was in the remake of The 39 Steps, starring Rupert Penry Jones. "I kept walking past him so I'd get some camera time," says Spy, "because, at the end of the day I'm into camera time – it's not the money, it's the vanity. First I was Man with Hat, then I was Man with Hat with Wife, then Man with Suitcase. Put it this way, you don't get a credit at the end of that."

Spy's under no illusions as to his place in the grand scheme of things – at least as far as the production crew is concerned. "You're the lowest of the low on set," he says. "There is a real atmosphere of 'them' and 'us'. At lunch, it's actors first, then staff, then extras. It's a tough grind," he adds, "the money's not very good and I don't think the chance of being 'discovered' is very great."

You certainly wouldn't want to be one of 14 youngsters from Fort William's Lochaber High School, who appeared as extras in the Harry Potter film The Prisoner of Azkaban. Their head teacher insisted any wages should go to the school, since they filmed during school time, though they were allowed to keep money earned at weekends.

"I always ask the question, 'Will I get in front of the camera?'" says Spy. "I met a girl who had done The Da Vinci Code. She turned up every day for three weeks and ended up not being in it. She wasn't bothered because she still got paid, but there's no way I would do that."

Spy's most recent audition was to play a golfer in an advert. "I'm actually a very good golfer, and so this is where it all goes horribly wrong. I didn't get the part. I'm thinking this might be the end of my acting career, if I can't even get a role doing something I'm good at."

Robbie Fraser, now a writer, director and film producer working in Glasgow, served time as an extra when he was a teenager. "My friend John Murtagh was working as the fight coordinator on the William MacIlvanney boxing movie The Big Man," he says, "and I spent a week cheering until I was hoarse as Liam Neeson got pulverised in an underworld bare-knuckle contest.

"Working as an extra is a great way to get exposed to a full-scale professional drama set – a world that can at first seem utterly bewildering." But he admits, "The long hours, early starts and endless repetition of the action can really be a grind. A lot of the time you simply don't have a clue what's going on."

A couple of years later, he got a job on Taggart as a 'featured' extra – which is a sort of stepping stone between being an extra and a bit-part actor. It also means you get repeat fees. "It was towards the end of the Mark McManus era," he says, "and it was a fabulous way to get into the rhythms of a film set."

He says that choosing extras for scenes can be a delicate balancing act for casting directors. "Generally you want to have background action that looks natural and doesn't distract from the scene the stars are doing, but at the same time you want to have supporting artists who look interesting, distinctive in some way. Quite often, it can be an extra's distinctive look that gets them work – that's why you get such a wonderful array of bizarre-looking people in the directories of casting agencies."

Which might explain a recent advert for work on a new Jennifer Aniston film, The Baster. The ad sought a "heavy-set woman who is able to ride a bike and is comfortable with a provocative wardrobe and having profanities shouted at her" as well as a "rail-thin teen boy with bad acne".

However, it is almost impossible to underestimate the value of background artists in some films. Sir Richard Attenborough's Ghandi, for instance, called on the services of 300,000 extras in the funeral scene – the most used for any film.

Paul Hamilton didn't appear in Attenborough's epic. But if a film was shot in Glasgow, you can bet he appeared in the background at some stage. The 39-year-old mind illusionist has been in Naked Video, Taggart, City Lights, Take the High Road and Machair. "I was a plain-clothes policeman for about five years on Taggart, but always just in the background. I did Takin' Over the Asylum with David Tennant – he and I got on like a house on fire."

One of his oddest roles was as a caveman for Richard Wilson's 1990 film Changing Step. "I had to wear this hellish outfit outside in the middle of winter, and I was freezing." But as far as he's concerned, that's all in a day's work. "I knew there would be a lot of hanging about and I knew we'd be last in the queue for lunches. The worst thing is probably a night shoot on Taggart in the rain, when it's freezing and you're stuck on a bus with no heating."

Hamilton had his own Mel Gibson moment when he was in the star's 1995 Oscar-winning smash Braveheart. "I was just one of the big hairy soldiers," he says. "But I didn't die – I was one of the survivors."

During filming, he managed to show Gibson a couple of tricks on set. "He called me Magic Paul from then on," he says. "Funnily enough, I was in London on holiday – it was when Conspiracy Theory was coming out – and all these barriers were up in Leicester Square. My wife and I just stood there and waited for something to happen. Mel Gibson came out and everyone was shouting, but he actually recognised me. He didn't come over, he just pointed right over to me and waved. I was well chuffed."

And to think, that could have been me… r

Famous faces in the crowd

THOSE handsome stars you see on the big screen didn't just appear there by magic. They had to work hard and accept often humiliating roles before they could afford those nose jobs and teeth-whitening operations.

Witness Sylvester Stallone's early turns as a subway thug in Woody Allen's Bananas, as a dancer in a club in Klute and as a "youth" in The Prisoner of Second Avenue. Kevin Costner was cast as the dead character Alex in reunion flick The Big Chill, but most of his scenes ended up on the cutting room floor.

Benicio del Toro had his face covered in fake hair for Big Top Pee Wee, while Laurence Fishburne was the uncool Cowboy Curtis in Pee Wee's Playhouse. Johnny Depp was one of Freddy Krueger's victims in A Nightmare on Elm Street. Bruce Willis appeared in a courtroom scene in The Verdict, while Ben Affleck and Matt Damon were in Field of Dreams. Brian Cox was an extra in The Prisoner, and Clint Eastwood worked uncredited in several films in the 1950s before finding fame a decade later.

Michael Caine and Oliver Reed appeared as background artists in British movies in the late 1950s, and Pattie Boyd was cast as a fan in The Beatles' film A Hard Day's Night, where she met future husband George Harrison. She obviously didn't fancy Phil Collins, an extra on the same film. David Bowie appeared in The Virgin Soldiers, and Jeff Goldblum in Annie Hall. Even Fidel Castro had a taste of the limelight before becoming Cuban president – he was an extra in the 1946 film Holiday in Mexico.

EastEnders has now attracted London mayor Boris Johnson for a cameo scene later this year.

EXTRAS ON EXTRAS

COMEDIAN Ricky Gervais brought the plight of the put-upon supporting artist to life with his award-winning series Extras, in which he managed to persuade big stars to play themselves. Of course, Gervais is now a massive star in the US, as is Ashley Jensen, who played fellow 'extra' Maggie Jacobs and is now a regular in Ugly Betty.

In the first episode, Ben Stiller played an irate film director, while episode two saw Kate Winslet as a cursing nun. Other big names to appear include Samuel L Jackson, Patrick Stewart, Ross Kemp and a self-referential turn by a down-on-his-luck Les Dennis. David Bowie, Orlando Bloom, Daniel Radcliffe, Sir Ian McKellen and Robert de Niro queued up to join in the fun for the second series, and a Christmas special starred everyone from Lionel Blair and Dean Gaffney to Hale & Pace, George Michael, Clive Owen and David Tennant.