LOS ANGELES \u2014 The union that represents tens of thousands of actors and other entertainment and media professionals has elected Sean Astin as its new president.<\/p>\n
On Friday, SAG-AFTRA<\/a> elected Astin \u2014 an actor who appeared in \u201cThe Lord of the Rings,\u201d \u201cStranger Things\u201d and \u201cRudy\u201d \u2014 to succeed Fran Drescher as its president. Astin is the son of the late Academy Award-winning actor Patty Duke and John Astin, who starred in the 1960s TV series \u201cThe Addams Family.\u201d<\/p>\n Sean Astin defeated Chuck Slavin in a 79% to 21% vote. Michelle Hurd was elected secretary-treasurer.<\/p>\n Patty Duke, Sean Astin\u2019s mother, served as the Screen Actors Guild\u2019s president from 1985-1988.<\/p>\n According to its website, SAG-AFTRA brings together Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. It represents approximately 160,000 actors, announcers, broadcast journalists, dancers, DJs, program hosts, recording artists and others.<\/p>\n Under Drescher, the union has navigated a pair of strikes<\/a> involving film and television actors and a separate one involving video game and interactive media performers.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LOS ANGELES \u2014 The union that represents tens of thousands of actors and other entertainment and media professionals…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":142955,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[49,48,361,75],"class_list":{"0":"post-142954","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-celebrities","11":"tag-entertainment"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142954","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=142954"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142954\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/142955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=142954"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=142954"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=142954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}