A strike by Hollywood actors kept most stars away from this year’s Venice Film Festival, and even the few A-listers who did venture into town seemed guilty about being on the red carpet rather than the picket line.
On the last full day of the competition yesterday, Oscar winner Jessica Chastain said she was ‘incredibly nervous’ to come to Venice to promote her independent movie Memory, even though she had a waiver from unions to attend.
“Some people on my team advised me against it,” Chastain said, adding that she had decided to come to give vocal support for the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA).
Actors went on strike in July, joining writers who had walked off the job in May, to demand that streaming sites and film studios improve their contracts and impose curbs on the use of artificial intelligence.
“I am here because SAG-AFTRA has been explicitly clear that the way to support the strike is to post on social media, walk the picket lines and to work and support interim agreement projects,” Chastain said.
The strikes have shut down both television and movie productions in Hollywood, but some projects that have no affiliation to the big studios, like Memory, are receiving passes to keep on working or do normal promotions if they comply with the most recent union demands.
Venice’s artistic director Alberto Barbera had predicted that the actors of just three of the 23 films in competition would not be able to come to the festival because of the strike.
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