RI actor Tom Paolino could be on the verge of his big break. First he's on the picket line
I wondered what it’s like to be an actor during the Hollywood strike, so I called Tom Paolino.
He’s a Brown grad, a cousin of former Providence Mayor Joe Paolino, and is typical of those on the picket lines: Like 98% of Screen Actors Guild members, he makes ends meet through other jobs while chasing the dream.
In Tom’s case, that can mean dozens of auditions a year.
But the strike has put those on hold.
Still, when I reached him by phone in the Queens apartment he shares with a roommate, he says it’s an important cause.
“I was just on the picket line this morning,” Tom said. “The word on the street is we’re in for a long haul.”
Talking to Tom Paolino is a kick. He’s an amusing, animated guy, clearly meant for show business. At 54, despite still needing side jobs to pay rent, no way he’s giving up.
In fact, if the strike doesn’t get in the way, he may have his best shot ever at a big role. I’ll get to that in a minute.
Tom grew up in North Providence, played hockey at Brown, and after a knee injury, he took an acting class and has been all about it ever since.
I asked Tom how much he made from acting last year.
Around $11,000.
But he’s thrilled to have banked that much. He makes another $30,000 or so as a tutor with a company helping suspended high school students. He calls that his “solvency job.” Since he has a shared apartment – and no wife and kids yet, he adds – he’s able to afford his bills, but he admits that an actor’s life is financially challenging.
So why keep doing it?
“My passion for this work,” said Tom, “is bigger than any fear I have.”
In 1992, around age 24, Tom moved from here to Los Angeles to make it in Hollywood. He did OK, but in 2001, still struggling, he left the business to earn a master’s in counseling, getting a job at a Los Angeles high school.
That worked for five years. But Tom realized he’s first and foremost an actor.
So in 2006, he moved back East to pursue the dream again, first in Rhode Island, then in New York City.
He’s had a lot of roles here in the state, including at Brown’s Rites and Reasons Theatre and at 2nd Story Theatre when onetime Trinity star Ed Shea was directing.
But the big goal is the screen, and it’s a kick to hear Tom talk about some of the roles he’s had.
In a cop show called “Nash Bridges”: “I was Jimmy D, a scruffy white trash, beer-short-of-a-sixpack guy.”
In the Spielberg-produced “High Incident”: “I was perpetrator number one, a guy stealing a TV.”
On a recent episode of “FBI” on CBS: “Respected, grizzled cop who knows the Bronx like the back of his hand.”
Last year on “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit”: “A wisecracking detective.”
And a ton more.
The pay is, of course, a key reason actors like Tom Paolino are walking the picket line. SAG scale, he says, has been stuck for a while at $1,082 for a day’s work, $3,756 for a week, which doesn’t sound bad, but as Tom pointed, you don’t get those roles often. The most he’s made in acting is $18,000 one year, and it’s usually $10,000 or so.
Google tells me there are 170,000 or so SAG-AFTRA members, and, as Tom said, the pay scale means that 98% need solvency jobs on the side.
He’s done a lot of those.
“Dude,” he said, “I was a Barney at kids’ birthday parties. I catered. I drove for Uber, over 10,000 trips between 2016 and 2019.”
He’s been in several movies by Chad Verdi – the East Greenwich-based producer who’s done a ton of films, including the Vinny Paz biopic “Bleed For This.” In one called “Self Storage,” Tom landed a couple of days of on-camera work, then got Verdi to hire him as the set’s janitor so he could stay in the mix. Anything to be part of a production.
Actors like Tom also make money at non-SAG productions, helpful now that there’s a strike. Two weeks ago, he finished 12 performances of Shakespeare’s "Pericles" in a small Queens theater.
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Admittedly, it only netted him $300.
“But I grew as an artist,” he told me, “and that’s one way I define success.”
Plus, Tom can always hope for residuals. For example, he earned $1,082 for an episode of “Blue Bloods,” and when it aired a year later during prime time, he got the same amount. But as many on the picket lines have pointed out, in the age of streaming, sometimes residual checks are now as low as $20.
For some actors, the strike means stopping active roles, but for most like Tom Paolino, it’s about not being able to audition for the next one – and the hope of the big break.
This brings us to Tom’s most promising shot yet in his decades-long career.
Last November, a Florida attorney and scriptwriter named Vincent Scarsella saw Tom on a “Law & Order” episode and thought him ideal as the lead in a show he envisioned about an attorney prosecuting bad lawyers. The two partnered up, raising $17,000 on GoFundMe to do a trailer and poster, which a South African producer saw online and loved.
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So in a few weeks, Tom Paolino will be flying to help pitch it to that country’s division of Netflix. SAG told him a pitch would not break strike rules.
But if the South Africa Netflix folks want “Lawyers Gone Bad,” as it’s called, Tom won’t be able to start filming a pilot until the strike’s over.
He understands that.
“I wear my SAG T-shirt proudly,” says Tom.
But could a long strike crater a possible deal?
“If it falls through,” says Tom, “something better is coming. You have to believe that as an actor.”
Which is what Tom Paolino is at heart, and is quite sure he always will be.
mpatinki@providencejournal.com
This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: RI actor Tom Paolino details life during the SAG-AFTRA strike
