NYC's out-of-work actors find new calling (WSJ)

By Nancy Tartaglione

"For struggling New York actors reduced to waiting tables for a living, there's finally an alternative career path: bedbug hunter." That line appears in a page one Wall Street Journal article today which notes that ever since Manhattan fell victim to the bedbug siege, demand has soared for people to get rid of them -- and as it happens, actors make the perfect bug busters.

"Actors have great personalities and follow directions well," Janet Friedman, owner of Bed Bug Busters NY, tells the Journal. She favors entertainers, she says, because they can improvise, work quickly and are used to the drama of a stressful situation.

Meagan Gilliland, a 25-year-old actress who moved from Chicago to New York last year, tells the paper that she uses her acting chops while going through every inch of a person's apartment. She notes that in a particularly dusty apartment, she will "pretend to be OK, like you're still having a good time with friends and stuff, while you're choking on a lot of dust."

"The performance aspect, the training that most of us have in our own fields, definitely helps when you have one of those more difficult places to go to," she tells the Journal.

There's also the opportunity to do character-study work.

"As an actor, you naturally study people," explains Gilliland. "You naturally take bits and pieces from people and put them into, like, your little lockbox so you can pull them out later for a character for a part."

The most common jobs for struggling entertainers in New York are still office temp work, catering and waiting tables. But "because of the economy, catering and waiter work has been way down," Kathy Schrier, director of the Actors Fund Work Program, tells the paper.

Shabazz Richardson, a 39-year-old actor whose credits include a bit part in "Zoolander" and working as a stand-in for Samuel L. Jackson in "Changing Lanes" and "Shaft," has been helping people with their bedbug problem for the past several months, says the Journal. He makes $30 an hour.