How the explosive Ellen Barkin defends less-privileged actors despite her millionaire status

“I was just informed that I was thrown off my SAG-AFTRA health insurance because residuals don’t count as earnings for seniors… seniors who need it most.” Such were the pull-no-punches words from Ellen Barkin on her X (formerly, Twitter) account regarding the loss of the private health insurance that protects members of the U.S. actor’s union, the largest in the world at 160,000 members. The 69-year-old actress, known for her work in movies like Sea of Love, Diner and Ocean’s 13, mourned the loss of her health benefits, which happened just as she is beginning a gradual retirement from cinema after four decades of continuous work.

So-called ‘residual rights’ have been one of the main points of contention between employers and unions in the strikes that froze filming in Hollywood for 120 days. Residuals are additional payments that studios and platforms must offer to makers of a film or series when it is rebroadcast on television or the internet. Faced with the boom of rebroadcasting on streaming platforms, with series such as Friends and The Office continuing to attract legions of adoring fans, the unions demanded — and won — an increase of this fee, and more transparency regarding the true number of times content is reproduced.

Although the case of an actress as popular and well-off as Barkin is able to trigger a heated debate on social media, the situation for the vast majority of Hollywood actors, far away from the glamour and red carpets of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, is one of extreme precarity. According to data provided by SAG-AFTRA, in order to claim the union’s health insurance a performer must earn an annual income of more than $26,470 and work 102 days a year. Only 12.7 percent of the union’s members meet these requirements — and earnings from residual rights do not count towards them, as the actress points out. Does that mean that an actor can never retire if they want to keep their health coverage? “Exactly what it means,” Barkin replied in another tweet.

With a fortune valued at over $87 million, the Emmy and Tony-winner has become one of the most vocal, committed and unequivocal activists in the country. Using her Twitter account as a megaphone, Barkin has presented herself as a scourge of the Republican Party and, most especially, of former President Donald Trump. Although her latest work in acting took place just this year, as a guest character in the series Poker Face and action-comedy The Out-Laws (Netflix), the actress from the Bronx expresses her opinions “without caring” about possible consequences that her opinions could have for her career. Likewise, she has spoken openly about how Hollywood’s chronic sexism has limited her career as a performer: “I was typecast first as the ugly girlfriend. And then I went right into the voracious sex symbol, and then I went to mean old lady. So it makes perfect sense — man’s view of me.”

In 2022, she made headlines for publicly condemning Johnny Depp’s possessive behavior during the trial for defamation charges that the Pirates of the Caribbean star brought against his former partner Amber Heard. Barkin and Depp had a brief romantic relationship while they filmed the movie Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and, testifying before the court, Barkin characterized Deep as “controlling and jealous,” also sharing how the actor hurled a bottle of wine in her direction in a fit of rage. Following the wave of confessions that led to the emergence of the #MeToo movement, she also publicly condemned the harassment and mistreatment of filmmakers like Terry Gilliam — “never get into an elevator alone with” him, she tweeted — and Harold Becker, who made Sea of Love. During the filming of a sex scene, the director allegedly and non-consensually ripped off a wig of artificial hair that was covering her private parts. In the actress words, Becker humiliated and chastised her: “What do you need this for? Nobody’s looking at you.”

After two marriages, one with well-known Irish actor Gabriel Byrne (The Man in the Iron Mask) and with billionaire businessman and shareholder of cosmetics giant Revlon, Ronald Perelman, Barkin’s last public-facing partner dates back to 2011. This short-lived romance with director and screenwriter Sam Levinson, creator of the celebrated series Euphoria, who is 30 years younger than her, made headlines for its novel generational gap in an industry accustomed to older men boasting of younger female partners. The actress has two children from her marriage to Byrne: actress Romy and Jack, who is a musician.

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