Newman, Hanks Rally for Actors

By Stephen M. Silverman

07/27/1998 at 12:00 AM EDT

Stars on both coasts turned out to support the 135,000 actors who have been on strike against the advertising industry for more than four months. In New York yesterday, Paul Newman headed a contingent that also included Kevin Bacon, Susan Sarandon, Richard Dreyfuss and Treat Williams, who led the crowd in a rallying cry of "Show the commercial, show me the money!" In Los Angeles, Tom Hanks, who appeared at a rally with David Hyde Pierce and Alfre Woodard, said before a crowd of 1,000 people, "Actors are the best bargain in the advertising business. We bring life to words on a printed page." At issue in the strike is the ad industry's desire to end residual payments to actors who appear in commercials. "We're not talking about a bunch of rich people striking," Tim Robbins told The New York Times, speaking outside an advertising agency that was being picketed. "These commercials put bread on the table for these people."