Struggling Entertainment Workers Are Fleeing Hollywood — But Some Employers Balk at Showbiz Backgrounds

In November of last year, facing the longest bout of unemployment she’d ever experienced, Paulina Williams was seriously considering what she would do if she had to leave the entertainment industry. The veteran reality television executive producer and showrunner with about 20 years of experience on projects like Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County and Big Brother recalls her husband asking her at some point, “Why don’t you try to do something that you’ve always wanted to do and you never had a chance?”

She responded, “Honey, this is what I’ve always wanted to do. I’ve been working my dream job my entire career.”Hollywood has long been full of upstart creatives who work side hustles — waiting tables, driving Ubers — to sustain themselves before they make a livable wage in the business. But now, amid a brutal and prolonged contraction in the entertainment business, a twist on that rite of passage is occurring: Workers who have already achieved success and expertise in the business have been looking for work on the outside as a stopgap, side hustle or a longer-term solution.

The data on how Hollywood has cut back in the last few years been stark. Between the first quarters of 2022 and 2024 — during which time the industry sustained two crippling strikes and the bursting of the streaming bubble — employment in California’s film, television and sound sector dropped nearly 30 percent, according to Otis College of Art and Design research. This year, production levels are still lagging behind their pre-strike highs: On-location filming in the L.A. area during the third quarter of 2024 dropped more than 36 percent compared to the five-year average of that same period, while a ProdPro report found that production volume across the U.S. dropped 35 percent in the third quarter of 2023 compared with the same period in 2022 (before the strikes).

Faced with these challenges, some in the business are retooling their resumés from a classic production format, which assumes the reader’s familiarity with the business and often entails long lists of credits, to a more corporate layout that briefly describes responsibilities and highlights certain skills developed. They’re translating what specific roles on set or in industry offices mean to employers who don’t speak entertainment. “When you say, ‘I work in development,’ they think you’re a fundraiser,” laughs former casting and development executive Lauren Kotlen, who has been working perma-freelance since Nov. 2023 and is exploring content development and talent-relations opportunities in marketing, advertising and digital media companies. Reasons Williams, “If I’m a showrunner, what does a showrunner do? Well, we’re project managers. Any producer is a project manager on some level.” (As a result, Williams has taken a Project Management Professional certification course during her job search.)

Other job seekers are wondering whether having entertainment credits on their resumés helps or hurts their chances of finding other work. Some have noticed hesitance on the part of select employers due to their showbiz backgrounds, which they attribute to a perception that they are just looking for temporary jobs during the contraction. At an interview for a Whole Foods overnight restocking position, production manager of 24 years Sidnee Lewis-Avila (The Hills: New Beginnings) says she was asked, “What happens if you get a call for a show or the industry bounces back?” She says, “They fear that I’m going to put in my notice and bounce.” (Lewis-Avila recently worked in concessions at Universal Studios Hollywood’s Halloween Horror Nights with the goal of making it through a probationary period, after which she can apply for backlot jobs at the studio.) Beth Kushnick, a renowned set decorator with credits on The Good Wife and Fringe, has long worked part-time gigs in addition to her production work; she’s currently doing interior design for private clients, staging apartments and working on an upcoming event for a commercial business in the absence of industry jobs. But at one point recently, she says, “I was up for a very big job out east, and they were afraid that I was going to get a movie.”

The Entertainment Community Fund Career Center’s managing director Elena Muslar has seen entertainment workers sometimes react to difficulties like these simply by omitting their experience in the business, creating gaps in their resume. Muslar recommends instead that the ECF Career Center’s participants tailor their descriptions of past experiences to whatever field they’re looking to enter in their resumes. Rather than leading with “I’m an actor” who will need time off, for instance, she suggests a performer could describe themselves as a kind of entrepreneur.

There can be emotional hurdles for workers who decide to step a foot outside the business, even if they’re not leaving entirely or forever. “I think the biggest challenge is more about people’s mindset,” says Christina Blumer, the executive director of the Will Rogers Motion Picture Pioneers Foundation, which offers grants for career counseling or retraining to professionals in the theatrical exhibition, distribution and vendor spaces. “People have this idea that ‘I work in the movie industry and this is what I do.’ And what’s really challenging for folks is that emotional attachment … to try and shift that or say, circumstances have changed.”

But entertainment workers bring particular strengths, too, to their job search. Workers who come from Hollywood can already be focused on tapping personal networks: “They always say ‘It’s who you know in Hollywood.’ It’s who you know anywhere,” says Kotlen. They bring a “creative skillset,” notes ECF’s Muslar. Fields that are particularly in demand right now for entertainment professionals are project management, digital marketing, creative direction, teaching artistry, arts administration and other types of content creation, Muslar adds — all of which can transfer skills people have developed in entertainment.

For about a year Kaitlin Saltzman, the head of scripted at Wilmer Valderrama’s production company WV Entertainment, has worked a side hustle that complements her day job. During the double strikes in 2023, as she saw friends being laid off and had a lot more time on her hands, the executive decided to develop both a hobby and an additional professional skill set. She ended up taking up an activity she hadn’t pursued since high school: photography. Now, Saltzman shoots clients on the weekends and edits her photos after her kids go to bed. She says of her photography and executive work, “They’re both visual storytelling. I really try to capture personalities that come through in the photos and I very much think that my career in television has a big part to do in why I’m able to do that.”

In the last few years veteran makeup artist Alexis Walker (Just Go With It, Knocked Up) has developed a business as a professional coach with a special focus on Hollywood workers looking to pivot. In this work, she found two main themes: Clients looking for ways to apply their skills in a new field and to strike a “balancing act of straddling two worlds” — still doing some Hollywood work while developing an outside business. She’s also the creator of The Hollywood Second Act Club Podcast, which showcases interviews with industry professionals who have pursued endeavors outside of traditional movie and television work.

In her view, the initial reaction to this slowdown was “sitting-duck stunned for a long time and blindsided and paralyzed, understandably.” But now, she says, “I think you’re going to start seeing a lot more inspired action as people come awake to the moment and what that means for them.”