NCIS uses a lot of extras with high and tight hairstyles. The classic Marine jar head. The Navy characters hair is a little longer.
The extras are on screen for a few seconds as the NCIS team walks by with an escort. Sometimes the extra salutes or says Aye Aye sir. That’s it.
Sometimes NCIS visits training bases. A character learned to repel off a training tower.
It seems unlikely that an actor would get a buzz cut for a non-speaking role with minimal screen time. It takes several months before they can audition or get hired as an extra for anything else.
I think off-duty military personnel are moon lighting. But never found confirmation.
Has anyone read or seen interviews about casting military style characters as extras?
It used to bug me when Magnum had a Vietnam flashback and had his 1980’s haircut.
Having known a number of actors who have made small, non-speaking appearances on TV shows: this is not correct, IME. Being able to put a network TV show on your resume, even in a small role, is a big deal for them.
In the grand scheme of things, a temporary haircut isn’t that big of a sacrifice.
Plus, I’m sure lots of people wear their hair close enough to that style in the first place. I keep my hair pretty short and could probably have it styled/cut into the high and tight look today if I wanted to.
That presumes they can’t get hired for any other roles with a buzz cut - but an awful lot of civilians have a buzz cut of some sort or even a fully shaved head. It’s not like there are loads of roles that absolutely require a specific hairstyle.
Not that I was a name actor (I had done a couple of commercials) but I had a chance to play an extra in Oliver Stone’s JFK. I passed when I was told I would need to cut my (then) long hair. But all the extras you see in that film with short hair or buzz cuts, got it cut by hair and make-up.
When I’ve gone on auditions for extras in movies and TV shows, there are typically hundreds of people there. Not all will be needed, of course, but with such a large group of people to choose from, they’ll typically be able to find people with the look they want.
For example, a few years ago, there was an open call for extras for a production that was filming locally. There were at least 1200 people who showed up. Out of all that, they only chose 90 people as extras. But they found the people they were looking for.
I once saw a posting for a film extra position with the caveat “Must be OK with having a 2x2-inch bald square shaved into the side of your head.” Apparently it was some kind of sci-fi flick…
Right. Sometimes, they can be specific in what they are looking for. In the example I mentioned above, it was a pretty general open call, because they needed ordinary people, men and women, old and young, including a few children. They’d be doing ordinary things: walking up and down Main Street, looking in shop windows, having something in the cafe, and so on. I was selected, and I ended up walking down the street and into a store.
But then, I went on an audition some years ago, where they were more specific in what they were looking for: a hundred men, over the age of 18, each with long hair and a beard. I had both, so I went; and I got cast, along with 99 other guys. Point is, though, that the audition place was full of guys with long hair and beards—no women or children, nor any men with short haircuts.
Only about 4% of people who think of themselves as actors earn enough to make a living from it, according to one website I just checked. They are nearly all just extras doing an occasional appearance on television, movies, commercials, and local plays. They have full-time or part-time jobs doing something else. Not many of them are eventually cast in a significant role.
Yeah, my normal haircut that I have had for decades is probably within regulations anyway (on the long side), but is probably too long to be acceptable in active duty circles. Getting a regulation cut wouldn’t be much of a hardship- maybe a week/week and a half and I’d be at my normal haircut anyway.
And when I was younger and in better shape, I’d have got a high-and-tight in a second in order to be an extra in a real TV show.
The “long hair and beards” one? That was the TV miniseries “Into the West,” from about 2005 or so.
We were a bunch of mountain men, circa 1885. The setting was a tent city, and the premise was that this was where we had come to trade and sell what we had trapped up in the mountains—furs and whatnot. A lot of wandering around, but also some scenes in the makeshift saloon. (The “whisky” was just cold tea.) Anyway, we were not supposed to look like we had been anywhere near civilization for months, so long hair and beards was appropriate.
