Stars donate millions to aid striking actors

LOS ANGELES

A dozen of Hollywood's highest-earning stars, from George Clooney to Meryl Streep, have each donated $1 million or more to support out-of-work actors as their strike enters its fourth week, their union's charitable foundation said on Aug. 2.

The Screen Actors Guild (SAG-AFTRA) walkout, and another strike by film and TV writers that began in May over pay and the threat of artificial intelligence, have brought U.S. film and television production to a halt.

The Hollywood "double strike" of writers and actors - the first since 1960 - has cost the entertainment industry and the California economy several million dollars per day, as well as costing the striking unionists their paychecks.

But wealthy A-list celebrities, from Clooney and Streep to Matt Damon, Leonardo DiCaprio and Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, as well as Nicole Kidman, Julia Roberts, Oprah Winfrey and others, have each contributed $1 million or more to the SAG-AFTRA Foundation's actors' support fund.

The nonprofit foundation has raised more than $15 million in the past three weeks to aid "thousands of journeymen actors" facing economic hardship, it said in a statement.

"The entertainment industry is in crisis and the SAG-AFTRA Foundation is currently processing more than 30 times our usual number of applications for emergency aid," Courtney B. Vance, the foundation's president, said in the statement.

The organization's aid program is meant to "ensure that performers in need don't lose their homes, have the ability to pay for utilities, buy food for their families, purchase life-saving prescriptions, cover medical bills and more," Vance said.

While some actors are highly paid, SAG-AFTRA president Fran Drescher said this week that 86 percent of the union's 160,000 members earn less than $26,500 a year, The New York Times reported.

The strikes have meant movie productions are shut down, glitzy premieres are scrapped, and events such as the Emmys are delayed as stars are banned from promoting TV shows.

The unions' demands have focused on higher pay in the streaming era and the threat posed to members' careers and future livelihoods by artificial intelligence, while studios say they must cut costs to cope with economic pressures.