What’s it like for an actor to star in a humongously successful show – as a photograph? How does it feel to be a big part of a huge production, but barely even act – essentially to have your face be cast? It turns out that – whether you’re the employee of the month in the background of a sitcom or a deceased soldier in an Oscar-winning drama – it can have a variety of unforeseen consequences, from upset grandmas to bemused baristas.
“My mum was very weirded out,” says 14-year-old Emilia Holliday, who plays Katie, the murdered teen inAdolescence. She is only seen being stalked and stabbed in distant CCTV footage, has no lines, and her role is largely limited to a few photographs – including one that is framed and surrounded by flowers and balloons in an impromptu memorial, which wasn’t the easiest thing for her mother to see. Or in Holliday’s words: “She definitely felt a bit weird.”
The Sheffield-based teen has been performing in musical theatre since she was three and signed to a management agency when she was 11. BeforeAdolescence, she had some near breaks, shooting small parts in films and commercials that – as is common in the industry – were sadly cut. This means that although Holliday auditioned for the speaking role of Katie’s best friend Jade in Adolescence, she wasn’t disappointed when producers called back and offered her the non-speaking Katie. “It was a bit unexpected,” she says, “but it’s still amazing, I was really happy.”
Holliday’s mum sent the production team “a lot” of photos of her daughter – Holliday didn’t know which ones were chosen until she sat down to watch Adolescence, “so that was a shock.” She was surprised to see her school uniform had been edited to match the show’s costumes, and that producers had chosen her preteen shots. “They were pictures I already had from like three years ago,” she says. “It’s really young pictures of me.” Consequently, Holliday hasn’t been recognised in public, even though more than six million Brits watched Adolescence in its first week. Still, there’s a buzz at school. “I’ve had some little year 7s asking for photos, which is really cute.”
Rebecca Fraynhasbeen recognised, and it hasn’t always gone well. The 63-year-old London-based writer portrayed what IMDb generously calls “Daniel’s dead wife” in the cult Christmas romcomLove Actually. Frayn went to university with director Richard Curtis’s partner, Emma Freud, and has long been friends with the couple. “He just rang and suggested it, I didn’t really give it much thought,” she says. Frayn handed over an entire family photo album because she didn’t want to rip out any pictures. “I would have thought about it more carefully if I’d realised it was one of those films that was going to hang around and be watched and rewatched.”
During afuneral scenein the film, photos from Frayn’s real life flash up in a slideshow as Daniel (Liam Neeson) looks forlorn. “They cut my husband’s head off my wedding photograph and put Liam Neeson’s head on,” she says – the couple first saw this during the film’s premiere in Leicester Square. “It was kind of a shock for both of us to have very personal photographs on a huge screen in a very public setting. It’s just unsettling.” The slideshow also features a photo of Frayn on the day she gave birth to her twins. “It’s all set to the Bay City Rollers – that was my main stumbling block because I cannot stand the Bay City Rollers. So to see these very intimate photographs cut to this blasting, upbeat pop track was kind of weird!”
After the film was released, Frayn received a “very emotional” phone call from a “very dear friend”; “She responded to it as if she was seeing my funeral,” she says. From time to time, strangers also recognise Frayn – “It’s kind of funny when it slowly dawns on people.” Frayn used to frequent a coffee shop regularly and “joke and banter” with the woman behind the counter. One day she remarked that Frayn looked like the woman inLove Actually. “I was rather pleased to say, ‘That actually is me!’, and she just gave me the oddest look. She obviously thought I was a complete fantasist. And that was the end of our lovely bantering relationship.”
Jamahl Cruickshank has only been recognised once – when he went to the cinema to watch the movie he appeared in. When he was 17, Cruickshank’s best friend told him that a film calledThe Holdoverswas shooting locally in Boston, so Cruickshank emailed over his headshot. He was cast as Curtis Lamb, the late son of Da’Vine Joy Randolph’s character Mary Lamb. Curtis dies in the Vietnam war before the movie begins, so Cruickshank was hired to do a photoshoot inmilitary uniform; producers also shot some fake graduation pictures with Randolph, who went on to win an Oscar for her performance.
“I had my own trailer that said ‘Curtis Lamb’, it was so cool,” the now 21-year-old student says. The day was slow – Cruickshank had some makeup applied and took the pictures with Randolph before waiting around for four to five hours. “I’m just chilling, I’m fine it with because I’m missing school but I’m getting tired. The next thing though, it’s time for me to get my hair cut.” At the time, Cruickshank had an afro that he’d spent the pandemic growing – it was buzzed into a military cut. “The barber wasn’t a professional barber, my hairline wasn’t lined up or anything,” he recalls. “I had a hat on for a couple days until I got to my actual barber.”
Director Alexander Payne personally led Cruickshank’s shoot – it took about 40 minutes to get the perfect picture, which Cruickshank didn’t mind, even though his uniform was a bit “snug”. He was ultimately paid about $800 (£620) for the day’s work. Frayn was offered a token £1 for her Love Actually photographs, but after taking the advice of a producer friend, “I wrote back and said there seems to have been a typing error and a few noughts got left off.” She ultimately got paid £1,000 and donated it to Greenpeace.
When The Holdovers came out, Cruickshank’s grandmother “didn’t want to see the movie because she didn’t want to see me dead.” Cruickshank, meanwhile, asked the usher at his local movie theatre if he could watch it for free because he was in it; they let him. Though he was disappointed that his name wasn’t listed in the credits, his friends applauded when his face appeared on screen. “There were a bunch of old people there that were so confused,” he says – once they figured out what was going on, they asked Cruickshank for pictures. “It was definitely a really heartwarming moment for me.”
Not everyone whose photo crops up in productions is portraying someone dead. Adam Rowe is a California-based production designer who has worked on a variety of TV shows, from The Good Place to Criminal Minds. His framed face appears in both of them – on a wall of employees in the former and a memorial wall in the latter. His name can also be seen on an office door in Mad Men (in real life, if you walked through it, you’d find craft services).
“There’s a long history of below-the-line crew filling up yearbooks,” Rowe says, “because it all has to get signed off. You can’t just go online and pull any photographs.” Crew pictures might also be used to make fake newspaper pages, or get stuck on crime boards between bits of string. Rowe used to regularly employ a local circus contortionist to play dead bodies that had been left in “weird positions” on Criminal Minds. Meanwhile, friends and family often leapt at the chance to share their pictures. Once, Rowe had to call up his mum and ask if he could use a picture of her from the 70s. “She let me make her a prostitute,” he laughs.
Part of the fun, Rowe says, is that: “You never know what the public is going to grab on to. People online are really good detectives, so they notice that there are a lot of faces fromParks and Recreationthat appear in The Good Place.” Rowe’s face also appeared in Dexter, and at least once a year, a stranger will message him on Instagram or Facebook to ask about it. “It’s always fun.”
For Rowe and Cruickshank, seeing themselves on screen was enjoyable – but to this day, Frayn avoids rewatching Love Actually, and knows she definitely doesn’t want to feature in a film again. “What I don’t like is when online accounts of my career add ‘actress’, which makes it look like I was a very sad, aspirational person who didn’t get very far,” she says. Cruickshank didn’t mind not having any lines in The Holdovers, but he also wouldn’t mind having some lines in the future. “If they ever make a prequel, that would be so cool.”
Though Holliday initially expected to remain voiceless in Adolescence, her role did actually increase during shooting. When she went for her first costume fitting for the CCTV footage, production asked if she’d like to perform with the choir featured in the show. She can beheard singinga solo at the end of episode two. “I feel like because you don’t hear my voice, it was very important that you got to hear that bit,” she says.
The young actor has appeared on screen again – she plays a younger version of Lara Peake’s character Carly in BBC thrillerReunion, which also stars Anne-Marie Duff. “I’m excited,” Holliday says, “you can actually hear me and see me in that one, so that’s better!”