Why Hollywood’s Animal Actors Can’t Find Work

Rocco may not have booked a film or TV gig in a few years, but he keeps busy. He still picks up the occasional commercial, keeps fit, stays social and spends his days in a bucolic valley about an hour north of Los Angeles. On this unusually breezy afternoon in July, he’s messing around with his longtime companion Porter when a new arrival disrupts the calm and things quickly devolve into a chaotic round of chasing and tug-of-war.

Which is what happens when you introduce a green plush alligator toy to an energetic Saint Bernard-boxer mix.

Rocco, whose credits include Veronica Mars, Jane the Virgin and The Morning Show, is one of many four-legged actors in the L.A. area who aren’t landing Hollywood gigs like they used to. As AI continues to advance, more productions are opting to create animal performances in post rather than film with the real thing — a trend that’s left trainers, wranglers and animal coordinators increasingly anxious about the future of their profession.

“It has certainly impacted the studio animal trainers and the studio animal business already quite a lot,” says Karin McElhatton, owner of Studio Animal Services, which houses Rocco and scores of other critters, from dozens of cats to a “retired squirrel” to a duck named Bob, supplying animal talent for productions like Ghostbusters, L.A. Confidential and CSI: Miami. AI isn’t the only challenge: The fallout from COVID, the 2023 strikes and the overall contraction of the entertainment business also have hit hard. But some in the field fear virtual animals could be the final blow.

A few dozen miles south, Benay Karp is also seeing a downturn. The owner of Benay’s Bird & Animal Rentals, she estimates the number of jobs her animals are getting is down to just 40 percent of what it was pre-pandemic. Karp specializes in small wildlife and birds, though most of her work comes from dogs and cats. Her feathered performers have appeared in Mirror Mirror and she supplied all the animals for years on Grace and Frankie. “I don’t think I’ve had a call for a woodpecker in probably three or four years, maybe five years. I have a flock of seagulls. I think I’ve only gotten one job for them in the last year, where they used to work all the time.”

Wild animals — lions, bears, wolves — have long worked less frequently than their domesticated peers. Scripts don’t incorporate these animals as frequently as others, safety risks are top of mind and they increasingly have been phased out thanks to pressure from animal welfare groups. But even the industry’s most bankable species — dogs and cats — aren’t getting the work they once did. Gone are the days of Lassie, Rin Tin Tin or Chris, the Saint Bernard mix who starred in Beethoven. In 2020’s Call of the Wild, Harrison Ford’s co-star, Buck, was a computer-generated dog based on a real canine. And in this year’s Superman, the sidekick pup Krypto was a digital version of director James Gunn’s own dog, Ozu, scanned for the role.

Even horses could be under threat. While some filmmakers still insist on the real thing — especially in Westerns and period pieces — trainers say even equine work could eventually be outsourced to visual effects. “In Secretariat, we had five [horses] that made up the same horse, and I would literally hand-paint them to match [one another],” says wrangler and animal trainer Lisa Brown. “Now, I don’t know why in the future they just couldn’t digitally do it more cost-effectively.”

Not everyone is mourning the shift. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals has long pushed to eliminate real animals from film and television sets, arguing that making them work for human entertainment is cruel and exploitative.

Lauren Thomasson, director of the organization’s film and TV division, points to tech-heavy projects like Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes and Mufasa as models of progress. “We know that AI can be used like all technologies for good or for harm,” she says. “In this case, this is one way AI can be used for a really good thing, which is ending the suffering of animals in the entertainment industry.”

But animal experts in the business argue that something is lost when performances are fabricated rather than filmed. Real animals, they say, bring a kind of visceral, emotional truth that can’t be faked — no matter how advanced the tech.

Bonnie Judd, an animal coordinator based in British Columbia, says she hasn’t experienced the same drop-off in demand as some of her U.S.-based peers, and she’s not as worried for the future, believing authenticity still matters. Judd recalls a pivotal death scene in 2019’s A Dog’s Journey with her canine star Belle: “I tell the dog to close her eyes as the camera dollies in on her face, and the whole studio is bawling their eyes out,” she says. “You don’t get that emotion with AI.”

Back at Studio Animal Services, Rocco and Porter, a handsome golden retriever, are eventually coaxed away from their favorite toys. A cluster of trainers wave treats, drawing the pair toward a particularly photogenic spot between a pair of large succulents. Right on cue, they pose for the camera, tongues wagging, eyes locked on the reward.

Still working. Just not quite like they used to.

This story appeared in the Oct. 22 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.