International Federation of Actors Elects SAG-AFTRA President Gabrielle Carteris as First U.S. Leader to its Highest Office

LOS ANGELES  — Today, delegates to the International Federation of Actors (FIA) 22nd World Congress elected Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) President Gabrielle Carteris to serve as the organization’s president — the first time an American leader has been elected to helm the nearly 70 year old global union federation.

“It is my profound honor to be elected president of the International Federation of Actors,” said SAG-AFTRA President Gabrielle Carteris. “For nearly seventy years, FIA has been a leader and fighter for actors around the world. FIA has worked tirelessly to make stages, sets and studios more diverse and equitable, in addition to creating a culture of respect and accountability in the entertainment, media and performing arts industry that transcends international boundaries. I am grateful to Ferne Downey for her leadership as president over the past nine years, and look forward to working with my colleagues across FIA in the years ahead.”

As leader of the FIA, Carteris will continue fight to empower collective bargaining and workers rights globally, improve working conditions, encourage ratification of the World Intellectual Property Organization Beijing Treaty on Audiovisual Performances, protect intellectual property and artists’ creations, promote global diversity, support artistic freedom of expression, and distinguish actors’ special status for FIA’s 81 Member Organizations. She will play a fundamental role in securing actors’ conditions of employment and supporting actors’ endeavors by sharing experience, providing technical expertise and conveying the solidarity of its worldwide membership. Carteris will also play a leading role in fighting for fair representation, inclusion, accessibility, and equal opportunities in the entertainment, media and performing arts industry. In all of this work, Carteris will uphold the special status accorded to the cultural sector.

“Gabrielle has spent her entire career in the entertainment industry, whether as an actor herself or standing up for workers in her role as SAG-AFTRA President, and I’m confident she will be a fantastic president of the International Federation of Actors,” said Dominick Luquer, FIA Secretary General.  “We must continue our critical work to expand the protections of collective bargaining, and make the entertainment industry more inclusive, supportive, and safe for workers all over the world. It’s clear that Gabrielle has a deep-rooted commitment to protecting each and every worker in our industry, and I’m so proud and grateful to welcome her as International Federation of Actors President.”

About Gabrielle Carteris
Carteris is a career actor who came to prominence playing Andrea Zuckerman on the hit Aaron Spelling drama Beverly Hills, 90210. Her long list of credits includes Code Black, Criminal Minds, Make It or Break It, The Event, Longmire, The Middle, and the recent reboot BH90210 among many others.

Carteris was first elected SAG-AFTRA president in April of 2016 and previously served as the elected executive vice president from 2013 to 2016. She is the chair of the National TV/Theatrical contracts negotiating committee and leads the President’s Task Force on Education, Outreach and Engagement. Carteris also serves as a vice president of AFL-CIO’s executive council, where she co-leads a sexual harassment workgroup, is founding ambassador of ReFrame, and commissioner of the Industrywide Commission on Sexual Harassment and Advancing Equality in the Workplace. She is also a sector lead for the AFL-CIO’s Future of Work Commission and is on the Board of Trustees of the Solidarity Center, the AFL-CIO’s global organizing and workers rights action group.

In 2017, Carteris was among the first to speak out about the abuse of Harvey Weinstein and the culture of sexual harassment in the entertainment industry. Since then, SAG-AFTRA: 

• Launched Safe Place, a new reporting platform available through the SAG-AFTRA member mobile app and at sagaftrasafeplace.org, which makes it easy for members to discreetly and securely report incidents of sexual harassment;
• Negotiated stronger provisions into its major contracts with studio and network producers that guarantee members significant rights and protections in intimate and highly exposed scenes;
• Developed and released the definitive code of conduct to prevent harassment and assault in the industry;
• Ended improper private meetings and interviews in hotel rooms and personal residences; and
• Retrained its staff to provide support to survivors who wish to report an incident or who need referrals to therapeutic resources or other assistance.

Under Carteris’ leadership, SAG-AFTRA led the charge on professionalizing and standardizing intimacy coordinators. An intimacy coordinator is an advocate, a liaison between actors and production, and a movement coach and/or choreographer in regards to nudity and simulated sex and other intimate scenes. Having experienced, qualified intimacy coordinators on set helps ensure SAG-AFTRA members who are filming scenes with nudity or simulated sex are able to work in a manner that maintains their personal and professional dignity while realizing the director’s creative vision. Recently, SAG-AFTRA launched the first industry-wide accreditation for intimacy coordinator training programs and registry.

With Carteris at the helm, SAG-AFTRA has worked tirelessly to protect its members amidst a rapidly changing entertainment industry, leading the charge on providing worker protections as the performing arts acclimates to streaming industry disruptors. SAG-AFTRA recently joined other industry leaders and advocated for the FAIR Act, which limits the unfair practice of production studios and record labels unilaterally holding artists off the job market, unpaid, for onerous periods of time.  SAG-AFTRA has led on worker protections for years, from recently announcing a plan to create more work opportunities by offering an influencer agreement that covers content creators and influencers to brokering the first agreement between a union and a global streaming service in 2019 -- Netflix.

Gabrielle Carteris is a leading voice for union member empowerment having played a key role in uniting Screen Actors Guild and AFTRA through merger which created SAG-AFTRA the largest entertainment union in the world. In her role at SAG-AFTRA she fought to protect members’ intellectual property and worked to combat deepfake pornography, which uses artificial intelligence to create bogus sex tapes that are often difficult to detect. The union was the driving force behind a major win in the fight against deepfakes, advocating for SB 564, a bill that banned nonconsensual digitally created sex scenes and nude performances in California. Additionally, SAG-AFTRA has bargained for right of publicity safeguards, which provides members autonomy, financial reward, and control in the marketplace.

ABOUT THE INTERNATIONAL FEDERATION OF ACTORS
The International Federation of Actors represents performers’ trade unions, guilds and professional associations in some 65 countries. In a connected world of content and entertainment, it stands for fair social, economic and moral rights for audiovisual performers working in all recorded media and live theatre.

ABOUT SAG-AFTRA
SAG-AFTRA represents approximately 160,000 actors, announcers, broadcast journalists, dancers, DJs, news writers, news editors, program hosts, puppeteers, recording artists, singers, stunt performers, voiceover artists and other entertainment and media professionals. SAG-AFTRA members are the faces and voices that entertain and inform America and the world. A proud affiliate of the AFL-CIO, SAG-AFTRA has national offices in Los Angeles and New York and local offices nationwide representing members working together to secure the strongest protections for entertainment and media artists into the 21st century and beyond. Visit SAG-AFTRA online at sagaftra.org.

Photo by Frederic J. Brown / AFP for SAG-AFTRA.

About SAG-AFTRA

SAG-AFTRA represents approximately 160,000 actors, announcers, broadcast journalists, dancers, DJs, news writers, news editors, program hosts, puppeteers, recording artists, singers, stunt performers, voiceover artists and other entertainment and media professionals. SAG-AFTRA members are the faces and voices that entertain and inform America and the world. A proud affiliate of the AFL-CIO, SAG-AFTRA has national offices in Los Angeles and New York and local offices nationwide representing members working together to secure the strongest protections for entertainment and media artists into the 21st century and beyond. Visit SAG-AFTRA online at SAGAFTRA.org.