Background Acting
Monday Ministerial Musings
By Rev. Mark William Ennis
2026 Blog #16
May 18, 2026
Background Acting
One of my hobbies is background acting. I enjoy being a background actor for movies and TV shows and I even get paid for it. It is a lot of fun and puts me in touch with a lot of wonderful and interesting people who are also doing background acting. There are some who are young and are trying to make acting a career but that is not the majority. Most of us use this as a hobby. Many are retired and are afraid of “rusting out.” They enjoy background work as a means to socialize. The fees that we earn are not extraordinary, but who else has a hobby that pays? Most people have to pay for their hobbies.
No, I have not met any big stars in the years that I have been doing this. I was close to the actor James Franco, in two scenes on the same project, but we were filming and I was unable to engage with him. I also was a background actor on a project staring both Richard Gere and Ben Stiller, but they were not in the scene that I was a background actor for.
My car once got into a scene on “Mr. and Mrs. Smith.” This was filmed in New York City, and we were offered bonus dollars if we owned cars that could be street parked where the filming was held. If you look closely while watching a Mr. and Mrs. Smith chase scene through the streets of Manhattan, you can see my car parked near the curb. In that same scene, I was a pedestrian and Donald Glover almost ran into me as he ran down the sidewalk in pursuit of another person.
Whenever I am watching a movie, I am now looking at the background people to see if I recognize anyone that I know. It is easy to overlook these people, but they add a lot to major movies. What would Titanic or Ben Hur be like without the large crowd scenes of extras? I don’t know how many extras were used in those movies, but I have been in filming’s with up to four hundred extras. It is a major challenge for the directors and the assistant directors to herd us around and get us to the right place at the right time. Extras are unnamed and mostly overlooked, but they add a depth to production that would be missing without them.
It isn’t just background actors who give such life to movies. I have looked in awe as I watched videography crews and electricians rig equipment to make the filming possible. The folks who work “behind the camera” are as important as the stars in front of the camera.
I can’t help but wonder how many “background extras” work to make my life what it is. These are people who are nameless and faceless for me but add a great deal to my life. I know the trash collectors, restaurant waitstaff and busboys but I don’t know who is running the generators that give me electricity. I don’t meet the farmers who toil for my food or even the butchers who make sure that I get beef in my favorite restaurants. Who is it that grows and delivers flowers so I can purchase them on Mother’s Day?
We might see ourselves as the “stars” of our lives but keeping us in our lifestyles are thousands of people who are the “crew” and the “background extras” who keep us in our lifestyles. They are not “stars,” but they are essential. Do we show gratitude to these people? I hope we do and do it well. Without these folks, what would our lives be like?
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