Actors Fund lends a hand to troupers in need

By Elysa Gardner, USA TODAY

At a gala Monday night in midtown New York, Al Pacino and Bebe Neuwirth will be honored by an organization that has long provided vital services to many of their lesser-known and less fortunate peers.

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  Todd Plitt, USA TODAY

  Husband and wife actors, Jeremy Stolle and Ashlee Fife spend time with their son Lincoln in their Manhattan apartment in 2010. The couple are members of The Actors Fund, a nonprofit human services organization founded in 1882. The group provides health insurance, housing and other assistance to 11,000 entertainment professionals in film, theater, TV, music, opera and dance.

Todd Plitt, USA TODAY

Husband and wife actors, Jeremy Stolle and Ashlee Fife spend time with their son Lincoln in their Manhattan apartment in 2010. The couple are members of The Actors Fund, a nonprofit human services organization founded in 1882. The group provides health insurance, housing and other assistance to 11,000 entertainment professionals in film, theater, TV, music, opera and dance.

The Actors Fund, which serves entertainment-industry professionals of all stripes from Hollywood to Broadway, and everywhere in between. Last year alone, the Fund delivered financial and social aid to more than 12,000 people in 48 states.

"From my decades of work in theater and film, I know firsthand the importance of our community giving back to support those in need," says Pacino, who is receiving the Lee Strasberg Artistic Achievement Award. (Neuwirth, a Fund trustee for 12 years and founder of its Dancers' Resource program, is getting the Fund's Medal of Honor.)

"Actors, musicians, crew members and so many others ? they are all a part of our community," Pacino says. "And when they need a helping hand, we know the Actors Fund will be there."

With offices in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, The Fund defines itself as a "safety net" for those in need, crisis or transition. Programs include health care, housing, insurance, emergency assistance and employment and training services.

"It's hard to make a living in this business," says Annette Bening, also on the Fund's Board of Trustees and a recipient of last year's Medal of Honor. "Unions aren't as strong as they used to be. For a journeyman actor - someone who doesn't have a famous name but has consistent work in theater or film or TV ? it has become harder to get through, harder to raise a family."

Bening has been aware of the Fund since her own days as a young working actress in New York, but developed a keener appreciation later on, when "a friend from acting school developed a very serious, debilitating health issue very suddenly. All he needed was an emergency loan so that he could pay his rent, and (the Fund) gave him one."

Jeremy Stolle and his wife, Ashlee Fife, both New York-based performers in their early 30s, had a similarly harrowing, and rewarding, experience. Their son Lincoln, now two, was born with a rare condition that created a hole in his diaphragm. He required three surgical procedures in his first week of life and spent nearly a month in intensive care before finally coming home, where he needed additional treatment.

Stolle, an ensemble member and principal understudy for Broadway's The Phantom of the Opera, contacted various insurance companies, who refused him on the grounds that Lincoln's was a pre-exisiting condition - even though doctors hadn't detected it until a post-due date sonogram. Stolle's own insurance required him to relinquish "about 40 per cent of my salary, and the co-pays were ridiculous. We were going bankrupt."

Then Fife, a former Rockette whose credits include Follies and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, decided to consult the Fund, which directed the couple to their Artists Health Insurance Resource Center. A social worker guided them through three sets of legal appeals, after which Stolle's insurance company covered his costs. And the Fund helped secure an affordable health care plan for Lincoln, who still receives physical therapy once a week - though as Fife points out, "To look at him, you would never guess he needs it."

Like many non-profit organizations, the Fund has been challenged by the economic downturn in recent years. It carries the additional burden of representing a community that, executive director Joseph Benincasa admits, is known to many in the public for "some of its excesses. You have to tell outside people that not everyone (in show business) is wealthy. A lot of them go from job to job. They're true independent business people, and it's rare that they can develop a sense of consistency in their careers."

To get that point across, the Fund launched a campaign in June 2009, aimed at both increasing major donations and expanding its membership in general. Co-chaired by Bening, theater producer Kevin McCollum and business executive Jonathan Tisch, the campaign ? which officially wrapped last April, though efforts are ongoing ? has raised nearly $11 million thus far.

That money "set the stage for a renewed major gift, housing development and membership efforts," says Benincasa.

Not that he or Bening has grown complacent. "It's a difficult time to make pitches for (financial) help," says Bening. "But the Actors Fund is really important. So many people aren't accustomed to seeking help, and this is a place that allows them to do so while preserving their dignity."

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