As the wildfires continue to incinerate homes, Annette Bening wants those who work across the entertainment community to know that the Entertainment Community Fund is here to offer immediate short term help.
Bening is Chairman of the Board of the Entertainment Community Fund, which was long known as The Actors Fund until the name was changed to reflect the widened scope of its philanthropy. It has the coffers and infrastructure to quickly disperse money to help homeless and displaced entertainment professionals in dire need. That help is available on its website.
The Oscar-nominated actress is making an appeal today as the fires continue to burn, the toll growing worse for industry workers. It goes well beyond seeing a house burned to the ground and needing a temporary place for families to live. The psychological toll is unimaginable, and Bening said she wants those who’ve already been struggling in recent years from the pandemic and other variables, to be aware that the Entertainment Community Fund is ready to help.
“It is unimaginable, what’s happened, and what is remarkable is how everyone you speak to, either it happened to them or it happened to 20 or 50 people that they know,” she told Deadlline. “It’s touching everyone, and of course, it’s not even over yet. It is truly catastrophic, tragic beyond measure.
“The Entertainment Community Fund is a social services organization dedicated to everyone who works in the business, and that’s just such an important part of what we do,” she said. “We help everyone. We used to be called the Actors Fund, and we changed our name specifically so people would understand that we’re there for the stagehands and the grips and the camera operators and the makeup and hair people, and the design, the actors and the writers, and the singers and the dancers and the producers and the directors, as well as sound technicians. It’s anybody who works in show business. It’s a great organization, and we’ve been around for a long time. There’s a long tradition, and we are highly rated on the Charity Navigator, which makes a difference to me. I know when I donate money, I want to know that it’s not being wasted, and we just have an excellent reputation and many different services. The important thing for people to hear right now is that we are here for those people. Emergency Financial Assistance is something that we really highlighted during the pandemic and during the strike, and we became a hub of fundraising for all kinds of people that wanted to donate. With organizations and studios and everyone, we gave out millions of dollars in small grants that went up to about $3000. For a person in an emergency that can make all the difference. We have emergency financial assistance, we have counseling, whether it’s grief counseling or just any kind of psychological counseling that people need. If you need help navigating all the different challenges, especially for people who’ve lost their homes and are dealing with insurance, dealing with FEMA, dealing with all the different entities that they’re going to be interfacing with, we can help with that.
“Our ongoing services involve housing, and we will also be hoping to help people in immediate need of housing,” Bening said. “We are still in the process of assessing exactly what that need is in Los Angeles, including how many of our people are out of their homes and need us to help with housing. We’re still looking at that. Right now in Los Angeles, so many people in our business are in desperate need. So we are in the process of trying to get the word out to people so that they know we’re there to help them. The website is very friendly. Bloomberg Philanthropies gave us millions of dollars a few years ago to set up a portal that is pretty easy to use. It’s entertainment community.org. People can go on the website, and we are pretty good about being able to assess quickly the need and whether you qualify. So for people who are in immediate need, they can actually just go to the website and for people who are lucky enough to be able to, you can also go to the website and donate. As I said, the need right now is massive because of what is unfolding right now in the Los Angeles area.”
We tend to look at immediate needs like housing, food and water, but if someone has been touched by this tragedy and has struggled with sobriety and addiction or depression, losing everything can create a slippery slope.
“If anyone needs treatment or is interested in going into treatment or even investigating treatment, we are very much involved in that,” Bening said. “Just this morning I spoke with a friend of mine who is an executive and she lost her house in the Palisades. She was talking about the need for grief support groups, and we are right now looking to get one going. It would be probably on Zoom, because that way we could have a professional grief counselor reach the most people.”
Bening considers herself fortunate; she still has her home. But she has heard plenty stories of difficulties endured over the past few years, and now, there is no comp for the fires that have decimated so many in the industry.
“Our business was hit particularly hard by the pandemic because everything was shut down, so that was extraordinary, and back then, the need in our community was huge,” she said. “That seems tiny, compared to what’s going on right now. The business has already shrunk, even before the fires.
“Now? We just want to help out our people. I have a documentary filmmaker friend who had a bungalow in Altadena. She grew up there, lived there her whole life. She made a very beautiful documentary film that was out last year called Last Flight Home about the assisted death of her dad, and it’s just the most gorgeous movie. She’s an example of someone who lost everything. She lost all of her camera equipment. She lost every little birthday and Mother’s Day card that her son had written. Her partner is a composer, a musician. They had quite a few antique musical instruments that they had in their house. They’ve lost everything. So that’s an example of somebody that we are trying to find to reach out to help.”
Somewhat lost in the perception of the industry is that most people in it are not wealthy, and struggle to make ends meet in the best of times.
“The vast majority of people who work in our business [are] working-class, middle-class people,” Bening said. “There are a lot of people who are privileged who have lost their homes, and we understand that, and their grief is great. But they have resources to get back on their feet. There are many, many, many more who’ve lost everything, and have nothing. Single moms with babies; people living in hotel rooms that are really struggling or don’t have anywhere to live. You read about people living in their cars. We want to help.”
English (US) ·