How I Got my SAG Card

How I got my SAG card - Teri Clark Linden, Member since 1993

Well, I was working my rent-job, hostessing at Ed Debevic’s in Chicago - the 1950’s family style diner with sassy wise-cracking servers - when a Bud Light commercial was shot in the back of the restaurant during my shift.  One of the waitresses was a talented actress named Ilene Getz, who television audiences would later come to enjoy as Jane Curtain’s monotone, expressionless assistant on the TV comedy Third Rock From the Sun.  Ilene knew one the of the production assistants, who was helping to cast the spot using Ed’s staff and customers, and with Ilene’s encouragement I got picked.  I ended up getting seen on two commercial spots edited from that one very fun session which became my first SAG job.  Flash forward about a year and Chicago casting director Dick Kordos got me cast on the Nick Nolte/Julia Roberts film I Love Trouble.  My role was an airline ticket reservation agent and I had one line with Nick Nolte.  I was in “must-join” status now, having worked that first SAG job on the Bud Light commercial, and needed my SAG card before getting to set.  Despite my having been promoted from hostess to waitress at Ed Debevic’s I was still a struggling actress and borrowed the money from my parents for the initiation fees.  Getting my SAG card was the professional bar for me I set back in college and I was proud to have achieved it just 4 years after graduation.  I joined AFTRA and Equity (with my own money) soon after, and I am just as proud now as I was then to be a member of these professional performer’s unions.  (By the way, my airline agent role was cut before I even got to the I Love Trouble set, but my parents didn’t make me pay them back and, of course, I got to keep my SAG card!)