THE Hollywood Drive : Orange County’s Film Extras Go the Extra Mile to Be a Face in the Crowd

Clay Hodges shot Jack Lemmon.

Stephanie Star Smith crashed on Earth in a spaceship from another planet.

Derek and Jeffery Larson, just three weeks after their birth, were fed to a baby-eating tree by an evil nanny.

Then they all went back to their real lives in Orange County.

You don’t see their names in movie credits. You don’t see their mugs on celebrity magazines. And even when you do see these inconspicuous folks--sitting in the boxing arena as Sylvester Stallone punches out another mega-hit or in the courtroom as Susan Dey argues her latest case--you don’t notice them.

Yet they are as necessary to Hollywood as Jack Lemmon, Sylvester Stallone and Susan Dey.

They are screen extras--the shadowy characters in the background whose faces you’ve forgotten by the time you’ve left the movie theater. But then, you’ve also forgotten the strangers who stood in line with you for popcorn.

“Without extras, the stars would walk down barren streets and dine in empty restaurants,” observed Carl Joy, senior vice president of Central Casting Corp., Hollywood’s biggest extra-supplying agency. “They’re what gives a movie a real-life feel.”

Central Casting has been around almost as long as moving pictures--since 1925. Today the Burbank-based service lists more than 25,000 professional extras in its files. About 10% of them are so dedicated to living in Orange County that they are willing to make the long haul into Hollywood.

Extras live from job to job, seldom knowing before mid-afternoon whether or where they will work the next morning. Studios and production companies contact Central Casting throughout the day, requesting a thug for this TV show or a yuppie for that movie.

“By 2 or 3 o’clock, we have heard from all the production companies who need extras,” Joy explained. “Then the extras start calling in to see if we can place them. We have a telephone line for men and a telephone line for women, and seven casting directors answering the phones.

“The extra says one thing--his name. If the casting director who answers his call doesn’t have a job for him, he will yell out (the extra’s) name to the other casting directors so that they will have an opportunity to put him on one of the shows they’re handling that day.”

He and his casting directors, Joy claimed, “can immediately conjure up mental pictures of thousands of extras just by hearing their names.”

O.K., then: Clay Hodges.

“Clay’s 6-4, in his late 40s, athletic looking, an ex-professional boxer,” Joy responded without missing a beat. “When I think of him, the first thing that comes to mind is something physical--a cop or a detective, a longshoreman, a dockworker, a soldier. He’s more suited for those kinds of roles than, for instance, a banker sitting at a desk.”

And he was right on the money.

Hodges could be described as a gentle giant--a towering hulk of a man with a kind face that resembles Jeff Bridges’. He was, indeed, a professional boxer in his younger years, and then a Los Angeles police officer.

“I didn’t care for it at all,” Hodges, 48, said of his stint as a man in blue. “Police officers spend most of their time driving around trying to catch someone doing something wrong, which gets to be very boring. And my colleagues were too macho for my tastes.”

So Hodges quit the LAPD in the late ‘60s and started looking for work elsewhere. “I saw an ad in the paper that said, ‘Come down and be an extra for Central Casting,’ ” he recalled. “I went in for an interview, and I’ve been acting ever since.”

Ironically, Hodges is a popular choice for law enforcement roles. “But it’s a lot more fun to act as a police officer than to be one,” he said.

Hodges lives in an exclusive area of Fullerton, in a house that he and his wife bought 20 years ago “for a good price.” If not for that bit of luck, and the fact that his wife brings in a second salary as a real estate agent, the couple would not enjoy such luxury.

“It would be very hard without another income to afford the down time between acting chores,” Hodges admitted. “It also helps that we don’t have children.” Base pay, for an upper-tier Screen Extras Guild member, is $86.32 per eight-hour day.

You’ve almost certainly seen him--even if you haven’t noticed him. Hodges has appeared in dozens of feature films, hundreds of television episodes, a few commercials. “I’m lucky because I’m a big guy,” he said. “As an extra, big people get more work than little people, men get more work than women, whites get more work than minorities, jocks get more work than non-jocks.”

Hodges stopped keeping count of his visual bites long ago, and only by sheer happenstance does he spot himself on screen.

“Sometimes my wife will be watching TV and she’ll go, ‘Hey, there you are,’ ” Hodges said. “And I’ll say, ‘Uh huh,’ and go back to reading my book. I’d spend all my time in front of the TV set if I made it a point to see everything I work on.”

There is one role that stands out above the rest, however--the one where he killed Jack Lemmon. Hodges played a police officer, as is his knack, in “The China Syndrome.” He even had a line: “Stop, or I’ll shoot!” Lemmon, the hero at an imperiled nuclear power plant, didn’t stop. Hodges shot.

Hodges’ victim, good-natured even in the face of death, had made a final request before the scene was--well-- shot . “He said, ‘Kill me gently,’ ” Hodges laughed.

Lemmon was one of the nicer big names he has worked with, Hodges said.

He said Dolly Parton was “a doll, so friendly, everything a gal should be” during the filming of “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas,” in which Hodges portrayed a barroom patron. James Garner came across as “just a regular person” whenever Hodges joined the set of “The Rockford Files.” Harry Hamlin always recognizes him and makes it a point to say hello on the many occasions Hodges takes part in “L.A. Law.”

Life as an extra, Hodges said, has fulfilled some of his childhood fantasies. “I once did a shoot during halftime at a Rams game, because (the film scene) needed a full stadium,” Hodges said. “I wore a Rams uniform and (portrayed) a football player. Talk about a dream come true.” Still, it was just another 15-minute job; Hodges couldn’t recall the movie’s title.

He probably never fantasized about becoming a furniture mover when he grew up but such was the role Hodges assumed recently on the set of “Matlock.”

“Action!” shouted one of the television series’ directors. Then Hodges and another extra lifted a table from a moving van. “Cut!” barked the director, a blink of an eye later. “Good.” One take, and on to the next scene.

It was 10:30 in the morning, outside a mansion in Los Angeles’ posh Hancock Park neighborhood. Although Hodges’ moment in the spotlight was over in a flash, he would sit around the set all day in case he was needed again. Often extras wear two hats in one television episode; for instance, Hodges played a police officer and then an attorney on an “L.A. Law” segment.

“TV is always hurry up and wait,” said Hodges as he relaxed with a newspaper by the mansion’s swimming pool. “I’ve read a lot of good books waiting for my next scene.”

“Matlock’s” second assistant director, who is in charge of hiring and organizing the extras, knows Hodges well. “It’s nice when I look at my list of extras for the day and see Clay’s name,” Jeff Srednick said. “I can depend on him to be professional.

“We use an unusually high number of extras--about 350 per episode--because we have courtroom scenes and party scenes,” Srednick added. “I try to utilize the same people again and again, though I’ll rotate them from episode to episode so that we don’t burn out their faces.”

Because the pay is less than generous, Srednick pointed out, many non-union extras work on TV sets simply for grins--in between those days at their “real” jobs. “You can get people who don’t take it too seriously, and don’t listen to direction very well,” he said. “There are advantages to hiring career extras.”

As Hodges whiled away the afternoon reading, two fellow extras--and fellow Orange County residents--passed their idle time snoozing. Identical twins Derek and Jeffrey Larson, the ones who were devoured by a baby-eating tree, awaited their turn on stage in a makeshift playroom.

Now 6 months old, Derek and Jeffrey are as sought-after as Tom Cruise. To mix metaphors with a certain upcoming horror flick, Hollywood eats up babies--two at a time.

Twins are necessary to the industry because of strict child labor laws. An infant under the age of 6 months can only “work” for 20 minutes a day, at 30-second intervals. Furthermore, if one baby decides to throw a tantrum mid-shoot, his look-alike can take the helm.

The boys’ mother, Katie Larson, was only 14 days out of the hospital with her darlings when the telephone started ringing. “If we hadn’t been pursued, it never would have occurred to me to put my babies in the movies,” she said.

William Friedkin--the director of such spooky fare as “The Exorcist”--was desperate. He was making a thriller titled “The Guardian,” due out this spring, for Universal Studios. And he needed lots of newborns for that evil nanny to feed that baby-eating tree.

Not your typical stage mother, Larson at first rejected the offer--even though it would add up to about $400 a day--children are paid more--over a 3 1/2-week time period. “The movie was being filmed in Ventura, and I couldn’t see making that drive from Orange County every morning after having gotten only four hours’ sleep the night before,” said the double-duty mom. “I would have been a hazard on the streets.”

But the film’s casting director persisted, finally coming up with an offer she couldn’t refuse: He would send a limousine to her Irvine home every day to chauffeur mother and children up the freeway.

And thus, two stars were born. Rather, two extras.

The calls kept coming. But five months would go by before Larson accepted another role for her sons--this particular “Matlock” episode, scheduled to air Feb. 13.

“I work at home as an accountant, so I’m having to take time off to do this,” said Larson, whose husband, Richard, is a real estate lender. “It makes more sense for me to work than for these guys to work.”

“Looks like one of them is down for the count,” remarked director Srednick, when he materialized to retrieve a little actor.

Sure enough, Jeffrey--blase about his chance at stardom--was sound asleep, leaving Derek to monopolize center stage.

It’s a scientific phenomenon: Grown-ups go berserk in the presence of a baby. When Derek’s mom delivered him to the set, everything came to a halt while technicians and cast members gathered around to coo.

The scene required four takes--but not because Derek wasn’t pulling his small weight. It was the adults who fumbled their lines and movements. “You’re hesitating too long with the baby. Just walk away--the baby is not important after this point,” a director commanded “Matlock” co-star Nancy Stafford. The show’s star, Andy Griffith, was not present.

Derek smiled and gurgled throughout, even with various strangers passing him back and forth. “I think it helps that he’s a twin,” his mother said. “He’s accustomed to someone besides me holding him 50% of the time.”

For some odd reason, Orange County provides television and feature film a disproportionate number of infant extras. “We find a lot more twins in Orange County than in Los Angeles,” said Irene Bayless Gallagher, owner of Screen Children’s Agency in Studio City. “Can you tell me why that is? I can’t for the life of me figure it out.”

Yet only about 10% of the 4,500 people registered with the Screen Extras Guild live in Orange County, according to guild spokesman Jerome Blackwell. After all, adults are not so much in demand that film makers will offer limo service to bribe them into commuting.

For Stephanie Star Smith, the drive is worth it.

“I can’t see myself moving to L.A., even if I started getting principal roles,” she said. “I grew up in Garden Grove. This is my home; this is where my friends and family are.”

Smith, 32, is still a relative novice at her career as an extra. “I started doing this full time in January of ‘88,” she said. “I had worked at a savings and loan for a long time, and got tired of it.” She shares a modest apartment with her grandmother.

Despite the fact that she has only two full years under her belt, Smith encounters little problem garnering roles. “You name it, I’ve been on it: ‘L.A. Law,’ ‘Designing Women,’ ‘Hooperman,’ ‘Matlock,’ ‘Golden Girls,’ ‘Married With Children,’ ‘Beauty and the Beast,”’ she listed, for starters.

“I normally play a yuppie type--a lawyer or a businesswoman,” Smith said. “I have your basic ‘thirtysomething’ look. I don’t have a model’s looks, which helps because for the most part they don’t want people who stand out clearly.”

She strayed from her usual yuppie roles when she played an otherworldly visitor in the feature film “Alien Nation.” “We were shooting in downtown Los Angeles one night, and a man came over from a bar across the street and asked me out,” Smith recalled. “I had on an alien mask that made my head look like an artichoke, and he didn’t even notice.”

Some television shows are more fun to work on than others, Smith said. “I find that the stars set the mood for the entire crew,” she said. “It seems that the actors who have the most talent are the least stuck on themselves.

“I’ve known actors who treat you like, ‘I’m an actor, you’re an extra. I cannot talk to you,’ ” she said. “And I’ve known directors who treat you like you’re an idiot, a sub-peon, to make themselves feel important. Being an extra can be hard on your ego.”

Smith hopes to attract speaking roles soon, to step out of the shadows, to emerge from the background.

Until then, though, she remains content with her life as an extra.

“Though it’s not very glamorous, it sure as heck beats sitting behind a desk saying, ‘How would you like the names on this bank account?’ ”