1. Don’t call me ‘extra’
In recent years it has become, if not politically incorrect, then certainly impolite to refer to Extras as Extras. These days the preferred nomenclature is Walk On Artist or Supporting Artist or Background Artist.

2. Definitions and rates part 1
There are actually different definitions and scales of pay to the work of the Supporting Artist, as stipulated by the BBC & ITV Equity Agreements. A Walk On is an artist who is ‘not required to give individual characterisation or to speak’. Their current daily rate of pay for a BBC production is £69.50 for a nine-hour day (including a 1 hour lunch break), and a minimum £66.55 for ITV.

3. Definitions and rates part 2
A Walk On 2 is defined as ‘non-speaking artists who are required to impersonate an identifiable individual but not to give individual characterisation’. (Eg: if a speaking character refers to you as ‘Jimmy over there’, then you are a Walk On 2.) The current daily rate for a BBC production is £86 per day, for ITV it is £86.20.

4. Definitions and rates part 3
Equity and ITV have a further category of Walk On – the Walk On 3, who is defined as someone who will ‘carry out the same functions as a Walk On 2 but shall also be required to speak a very few unimportant words where the precise words spoken do not matter’. This commands a mighty £102.60 per day.

5. Joining Equity
You can actually join Equity as a Walk-On Artist providing you can show evidence of having worked for at least six days during the previous 12 months as a Walk-On Artist undertaken on an Equity agreement. All of the above information is quoted from the Equity website. See Links for web address and up to date information, as well as contact names and addresses for further advice.

6. Rhubarb, rhubarb, rhubarb, or the lost art of walla-walla
Whilst still maintaining your ‘non-speaking’ role, you might be asked to ‘pretend’ to be speaking, in order to get a natural ‘atmos’. Traditionally, this involved saying ‘rhubarb, rhubarb, rhubarb’, or even ‘walla-walla’ to the person nearest to you. However, as this artifice generally led to fits of the giggles, these days you are generally asked to talk to the person nearest you about your journey to the studio, or what you had for breakfast, or some other ‘naturalistic’ bit of trivia.

7. You Meet The Strangest People On Set
Benito Mussolini, the one time Italian fascist dictator, appeared as a then unknown extra in the film Eternal City (1914). In 1946 the revolutionary Cuban leader Fidel Castro appeared as an extra in a film called Holiday In Mexico.

8. Sobering Thought
‘Actors are cattle’ – Alfred Hitchcock.