I find this showpretty creepy…it always starts with a corpse on a morgue slab…are live actors paid todo this? And, does thge SAG require that live actors play the part of the dead? What about residuals for the actors playing stiffs? Man…all these new frontiers in entertainment law! :smack:
No direct answer to your specific questions, I’m afraid, but I do remember an interview with Law & Order creator Dick Wolf in which he said that that the dead victims on L&O were played by (live) extras and that these were highly sought-after gigs. Apparently the corpse at the center of the mystery is one of the very few roles an extra can get that’s virtually guaranteed not to be cut out of the show during editing.
This week’s CSI: Miami will feature skateboarding legend Tony Hawk as the corpse.
Generally, CSI uses made-up actors to play corpses, unless the body is supposed to be extremely far-gone.
In contrast, Six Feet Under uses sculpted silicone corpses. (So, no, the Screen Actors Guild doesn’t require stiff roles to go to their members… :))
I’m pretty sure it’s a matter of practicality and economics.
If I’m not mistaken, one of the CSI DVD boxed sets has a bonus feature addressing this…from the whole makeup application to the filming process. I seem to recall seeing this awhile back.
If I recall correctly, they had a great outtake where Doc Robbins flubbed a line, causing the “corpse” to bust up laughing. 
As a matter of fact, on an episode of CSI: Miami, a local improv comic (no, not me) played the dead body. I didn’t see the episode, but I think he was hit by a car.
I’ve always thought Emily Procter was trying to play a corpse. Anyone else find her acting to be particularly wooden? Maybe it’s hard to notice with David “Mr. Excitement” Caruso being in the cast.
Her acting doesn’t bother me as much as her voice does.
Most of the time on CSIs you see the “corpse” as the live person during the re-enactments so it would make sense that they are played by live actors.
Tony Hawk wasn’t just the corpse tonight - looks like he did ALL the skating too.
A friend of mine played a corpse (pre- and post-mortem) on Law & Order. She’s a model and cannot act, but she apparently had the “look” they were going for. This makes me think you don’t need very much more than the right image and some luck to land a corpse role. Because my friend can’t act at all, not even do any kind of accent. She told them so, too. They still used her.
I was just watching a rerun of CSI and saw someone on a slab who looked really familiar. Sure enough, when the credits ran, it was a guy from this area who is a big voice over actor now in Hollywood (he does the announcement at the end of the T-Mobile commercials with Catherine Zeta Jones). Way to go, Matt! You make a really purty corpse.