‘I’ve been number one on the call sheet and number 247’... Sean Astin in his Sag-Aftra office in Los Angeles. Photograph: Philip Cheung/The Guardian
Steve Rose
His mother was an Oscar-winning actor who had been exploited from a young age; Astin appeared in The Goonies at just 13. Now, he has followed in his mother’s footsteps again as a union leader. He talks Stranger Things, AI and why playing Samwise Gamgee cost him his house
Sean Astin is showing me around his new office. There’s framed movie prints on the walls, piles of paperwork and a stack of boxes of Stranger Things Funko Pops. “If you were here, you could look out this window and see a 10-storey building with our iconic Sag-Aftra logo on it,” he says proudly on video call, gesturing out of the window to the Los Angeles skyline. “But you just have to trust me that it’s there.” He shows me a framed photo of his mother, Patty Duke, aged 16, with the best supporting actress Oscar she won in 1963 (for playing Helen Keller in The Miracle Worker), and even more proudly, a framed copy of Duke’s business card from when she was president of the Screen Actors Guild in the mid-80s – the role he now occupies (Sag merged with the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists in 2012). The 10 months of his presidency “has been a whirlwind”, he says.
It’s still slightly jarring to see Astin in a suit and tie, lanyard around his neck. We’re more accustomed to seeing him in the handwoven cloak and hairy feet of Samwise Gamgee, loyally accompanying mister Frodo into Mordor in The Lord of the Rings. Or as Winona Ryder’s short-lived partner in Stranger Things (before a Demodog got to him). Or as never-say-die college football underdog “Rudy” Ruettiger in the 1993 biopic. Or, for viewers of his own vintage, as plucky leader Mikey in The Goonies. Astin has been a member of the union he now represents for 45 of his 55 years, but he seems to have survived the perils of child stardom and a Hollywood upbringing remarkably unscathed. In fact, you could see it all as preparation for the role.
He certainly honed his negotiating skills early. “I learned at a very young age, how to speak different languages. I could speak the language of my mother, I could speak the language of father and my brothers and I had a peacemaker role in our five-boy family.”
But there’s also an overlap between Astin’s roles on screen and off. “The parts I get are the ‘working man’ parts,” he says. “Rudy comes from a steel mill, Samwise is a gardener, he’s hands in the soil. There’s just something physically about me. I don’t know whether it’s my height and weight or whatever my internal life became with my parents and my wife and children and everything, but I’m just appropriate for those parts.”
Plucky leader... from left: Astin, Kerri Green, Ke Huy Quan, Josh Brolin, Martha Plimpton and Corey Feldman in The Goonies. Photograph: Cinematic/Alamy
This was his pitch to Sag-Aftra’s 160,000 members – not just actors but also dancers, stunt performers, broadcast journalists and DJs: “I said I want to lean into the parts of my personality that are depicted in The Goonies and Rudy and Stranger Things and The Lord of the Rings, on behalf of the members.” He was elected last September with nearly 80% of the vote.
Astin was born into what some might term “Hollywood royalty”, though on paper it sounds less like a head-start than a curse. Duke, his mother, was groomed as a child star and acquired considerable commercial clout, including her own TV show, which ran for three years in the 60s. But she suffered the worst of the industry in the process. She was taken into the care of talent agents John and Ethel Ross when she was eight, given drugs and alcohol and exploited and abused, sexually and financially. As well as eating disorders there were “suicide attempts, violent outbursts, and long stretches of depression,” Astin says. She was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 1982.
When Duke became pregnant with Sean in 1970, aged 23, it was not clear who his father was. She had been in a relationship with 17-year-old Desi Arnaz Jr (which apparently infuriated his mother, the comedian and actor Lucille Ball). Duke then fled to Las Vegas and hastily married Michael Tell, a rock promoter (the marriage lasted 13 days), then a year after Astin was born, she married the actor John Astin, best known for portraying Gomez in the original Addams Family television series. John and Duke were married until 1985, and he became Sean’s adoptive father, although a DNA test in 1994 revealed that Tell, who died last year, was his biological father. Astin maintained good relationships with all of these men, he says, including his stepfather, Duke’s fourth husband, Michael Pearce. He calls Arnaz Jr his “godfather”. Astin senior is now 96 and happily retired. Sean credits him for somehow making this complicated, potentially traumatic setup work: “He always wanted to do the right thing, and for him the right thing was humanity, and to put yourself in the other guy’s shoes, and two wrongs don’t make a right.”
The same goes for his mother, who died in 2016. To classify her as a casualty of the entertainment industry is too reductive, Astin suggests, “because she was so smart. She was brilliant. My dad had all this academic training, but if you watch the gameshows that they were on in the 70s and 80s, she’d wipe the floor … so I feel like it’s a trope to lean into the melodrama and the pop culture.” Still, Duke’s level of child stardom cannot have been healthy, he acknowledges, “when you have money and that level of impact on other people, it can be destabilising for everyone involved.”
Astin with his mother, Patty Duke, in 2004. Photograph: David S Holloway/Getty Images
His parents never discouraged Astin from following the same path, although his mother was fiercely protective of him. He hesitates to psychoanalyse her, but says, “I think she wanted to rectify the pain and trauma of her childhood by raising a child who could have a similar experience absent that trauma.”
He remembers a time as a teenage actor when she was on set, and a sound engineer made a disparaging comment about his braces. “He mumbled something about ‘the kid’s got fucking marbles in his mouth.’ And my mom flipped out. Her upset was way more traumatic than me not having even heard this mildly disparaging thing that this guy had whispered to himself. But that is the level of mama-bear protection that she had. She was only 4ft 11in, but she scared the shit out of people.”
For similar reasons, Duke was also a formidable union leader. “She was, from everything I’ve heard, a beloved figure.”
Being a child star in the 80s certainly had its dangers. Astin was 13 when he starred in The Goonies. His co-star Corey Feldman, and Feldman’s friend Corey Haim, both later alleged childhood sexual abuse within the industry – and struggled with substance abuse and other issues in adulthood (Haim died in 2010). His near-contemporary Drew Barrymore was in rehab by the time she was 13. Astin remembers meeting her in a nightclub around that time. “I saw her and gave her a big hug. We kind of liked each other … But I remember thinking: ‘Boy, is it OK that she’s in that experience?’” Astin didn’t do that kind of stuff, he says. “I was never interested in drugs and alcohol or like wild promiscuity or those kinds of things. I got married very young, at 21. We just had our 34th wedding anniversary.”
If there was one time the industry started to get to him, it was during The Lord of the Rings movies, in the early 00s. Astin was a key member of the huge cast, arguably the story’s moral centre, but “I was not prepared for that level of visibility and access,” he says. “And there was a disconnect between the attention that I was getting and how much money we had. It was not a lot of money! In fact, I had to sell my house because I negotiated such a small amount on the trilogy.” He’s “very comfortable financially now”, he says.
‘I was not prepared for that level of visibility’... with Elijah Wood in The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. Photograph: Everett Collection Inc/Alamy
He has also had the very 21st-century experience of seeing Samwise Gamgee as the subject of erotic fan fiction, endless memes and now AI-generated fan slop, where his character meets his older or younger self, or dies and has a funeral, or does things with Frodo that would make Tolkien turn in his grave. “So far I haven’t been bothered by it,” he says, “but what happens when it truly is indistinguishable from yourself?”
He still sees his fellow hobbits – Elijah Wood, Billy Boyd and Dominic Monaghan – regularly, at conventions all over the world. “We have a great time. We go to fancy dinners together. We really enjoy the fellowship. We’ve probably done a dozen of them, we’ve got more planned.” And a return to Middle-earth is still possible. Andy Serkis is now in New Zealand filming in-between movie The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum, with Wood and Ian “Gandalf” McKellen reprising their roles. And director Peter Jackson recently announced another project after that, co-written by Tolkien superfan Stephen Colbert. It’s very early days, says Astin, who has spoken to Colbert about it, but he could see himself returning. “I don’t think anybody is opposed to it. We’d all love to connect to those characters, particularly if it’s done with such sensitivity as we heard.” And better paid this time? “Goddam right.”
For the time being, though, acting is not really the priority. There’s no shortage of issues in Astin’s in-tray, uppermost of which is the looming spectre of artificial intelligence. Under his predecessor, Fran Drescher, Sag-Aftra went on strike in 2023 for 118 days, partly over studios’ use of AI-created “digital doubles” of performers, but also over residual fees from streaming services. Deepfakes and other AI image technology have become more sophisticated and widely available since.
Sag-Aftra has been campaigning for the past three years to pass the No Fakes Act, alongside a coalition of politicians, and tech and media companies such as Disney and Google. “The premise of this law is, it’s going to establish for the first time an individual intellectual property right in name and likeness. So this is the silver-bullet fix,” Astin says. Earlier this month he warned the House judiciary committee of the threat, but he did not dismiss the technology wholesale: “We don’t want to stop progress, we need to civilise it.”
Before a Demodog got him... with Winona Ryder as her short-lived partner in Stranger Things. Photograph: Courtesy of Netflix
There are myriad complications to this issue. He was a month into the job when AI-generated actor Tilly Norwood arrived on the scene, for example. Big tech is moving in on Hollywood, as with the Paramount-Warner Bros merger, bankrolled by the Oracle-owning Ellison family, which threatens further job losses on top of a downturn in US film and TV production of as much as 40% in recent years (Sag-Aftra has not taken a position on the merger, preferring dialogue, Astin says).
At the same time, elder statesmen such as Martin Scorsese and George Lucas have openly embraced AI, and urged the industry to do likewise. Astin gives a measured response: “I would ask these legends in the industry to speak thoughtfully and carefully about this technology. I get the sense sometimes that some of the commentary is not well thought-out. And I think that audiences really need their leadership in navigating this space.”
If Astin seems comfortable in the role, it’s partly because he has been a local Sag-Aftra delegate and sat on its committees for several years now. He’s still learning, he says, but he seems to relish it. “I gotta say, it’s a much more enjoyable existence than feeling buffeted by the winds of a trillion-dollar industry that has just foisted itself on the public without any real concern for the safety and wellbeing of people who are going to use this technology.”
His career has had ups and downs. “I’ve been number one on the call sheet and I’ve been number 247,” he says.“Even at the height of any of these movies, including Lord of the Rings, I’ve never been on the A-list.” He’s always had a steady stream of work, but he’s been turning down offers recently because he doesn’t want to step out of Sag-Aftra negotiations, he says.
‘The parts I get are the working man parts’ … Astin in biopic Rudy. Photograph: Cinematic/Alamy
Given that past presidents of Sag include Ronald Reagan, I wonder if he has considered getting into politics. He has supported Democrat politicians in the past, including Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. Well-known and liked, scandal-free, diplomatic, a family man, with a record of standing up for the little guy and vanquishing evil (on film at least) – it feels as if he’s got all the attributes.
“I appreciate that,” he replies. “I certainly have the interest, but my wife and I have talked a lot about the porch with the rocking chairs …” She has been very patient through his various exploits, he says. Not just acting and union work, he’s also done a master’s degree (in public administration and policy), completed an Iron Man triathlon, hosted a podcast … he’s always busy. “So at a certain point, it’s just not very courteous to not honour the family.”
So he has thought about it? “Well, I’ve always fantasised about it. You know, actors love politics. We want to play congressmen and senators and presidents.” He deflects, pointing out that thanks to social media, everyone has a platform these days, not just actors and celebrities, and that we should all be participating in the political process and making our voices heard, especially given the threat big tech poses, not just to Hollywood, but to all of us.
But Astin is also smart enough, and modest enough, not to get ahead of himself. “I’m a straight shooter and I’m honest. There are certain things about my value system that are unimpeachable. But I’m also, you know, a fuck-up sometimes,” he says. Being president of the actors union is plenty enough for now. “I feel equal to the task of accepting the responsibility of this job and the constitutional requirements that come with it … I don’t expect that anyone would look at me and think he’s, you know, unflappably perfect, but I like the idea that people would look at me and go: ‘Wow, he sort of put his shit together.’ That’s pretty good.”
