New technology means late actors including Ian Holm and Christopher Reeve have reappeared on our screens. But what about performers who would prefer to be left to rest in peace?
Most CGI is now of such high quality it has become invisible. We don't notice when the lighting in a scene is changed to highlight the good side of an actor's face, when an errant coffee cup is removed from a shot, or even when a flock of sheep is entirely computer generated (take a closer look at Brokeback Mountain sometime). There are occasions, though, when CGI becomes blatantly obvious, often when it is used to augment or generate human performances. Perhaps a character looks suspiciously smooth in a flashback scene, when we know the actor is in their eighties. Or perhaps an actor appears in a new movie even though we know they have passed away.
This has occurred more and more in recent years as the technology has improved. When Oliver Reed died during the filming of Gladiator in 1999, his remaining scenes were stitched together with the help of a body double and the footage they'd already shot. The same trick was used in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, this time to paste a young Carrie Fisher onto a stunt double's body. Rogue One also features a generated version of Peter Cushing, achieved by putting an actor through motion-capture software and placing Cushing's face over his. Christopher Reeve, who was paralysed in a horse-riding accident in 1995 and died in 2004, appeared — in a youthful, able-bodied form — in 2023's The Flash.
Sometimes, consent is sought and given for these augmented performances. Fede Álvarez, who directed this year's Alien: Romulus, spoke to Ian Holm's widow before resurrecting the late actor's character for the new film. And, of course, de-aging requires the consent of the older actor whose performance is being augmented — this is how we got the rather uncanny effect of Harrison Ford's gravelly 80-year-old voice coming from his 40-year-old visage in Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny, or the smooth faces and contrastingly stiff movements of the (then) septuagenarian Al Pacino and Robert De Niro in The Irishman. Christopher Reeve's children, however, had no involvement in his cameo in The Flash.
Media lawyer Kelsey Farish first became interested in this topic due to deep fakes, but soon realised the vast scope of the technology. ‘What if a film studio created an image or created a deep fake of an actor that wasn't sexual and actually didn't harm their reputation, but it put them at risk for being basically disintermediated from their own work? You could make a sequel to a film and not pay the actor. Why? Because the film studio owns the copyright, and an individual themselves doesn't own the copyright unless they take a selfie.’ Actors and their heirs currently have little legal recourse against these CGI and AI likenesses being used, especially for pre-existing characters.
In our modern world, where so much of lives happen online, there's something existential about maintaining control over how our faces and voices are used. Farish says, ‘I think that there is this hunger for people to have some other type of right that's not intellectual property, but is something that speaks to bodily autonomy and agency, especially in the world of social media, some way for us to stand up and say, “Whoa, that's my face, that's my voice, that is me. I want to protect it.”’
Body scans are now in widespread use to create digital replicas of actors for the purposes of post-production changes. This grants studios access to actors' likenesses, and in some cases performers are reportedly asked to sign over these rights "in perpetuity". However, after the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike in the US, protections were negotiated for actors with regards to their digital replicas. An actor now has the right to consent to whether a replica of them is used, and the right to be paid for that use. The same doesn't apply in the UK, although the actors' union Equity is lobbying for similar legislation to be issued here.
Actor Rupert Young (Merlin, Bridgerton) explained that, much like any other field, technology is altering film and television in a multitude of ways. ‘The industry is changing, as well as AI and CGI, I think that's just yet another factor, a really, really important factor, but there are a lot of other things that are pushing people further down or [making them] more replaceable.’ Most auditions are now done remotely, with actors responsible for recording themselves, rather than performing in front of the director and casting director in person. This has its positives — actors can audition from anywhere in the world, and for multiple projects in one day — but it is also serving to further atomise actors, making an already lonely job even lonelier and, he says, ‘feeding into [acting] becoming more about all those things that people fear, of being judged just on a look as opposed to how good you are at connecting with people, which is what acting is all about.’
That human connection is vital on set. The camaraderie between the company of workers, from lighting technicians to actors to make-up artists, contributes enormously to the energy of the production. With so much now being "fixed in post", and with the potential for AI-generated performances, it's possible that sets will empty out, removing the magic that comes from bringing a big company of workers together for a shared goal. CGI work is done after the set has been closed and the actors and other production workers have finished their part of the job, and since effects are often out-sourced rather than being created within film studios themselves, these workers are made invisible. Until recently, VFX houses were rarely unionised, and there are many reports of teams working extremely long hours and even sleeping at their desks to get projects finished on time. Effects workers are often perceived more as technicians than artists, but it seems that this view is shifting as more productions rely on their efforts and more creative and expressive uses for the technology are found. Young explained how valuable this work is: ‘The CGI team [on Merlin] were such brilliant people, and at the top of their game. There's such an artistry in that. For years they've been doing that and are, for various shows, so important. For fantasy they make the show.’
It's possible that the advent of CGI and AI will go down in history as the kind of significant technical advance that forever alters the nature of film and television, one similar to the advent of sound or colour in the last century or of digital cinematography at the turn of this one. There were filmmakers who resisted those changes, who thought it had diluted the art form or even ruined cinema completely. In 1992, Orson Welles told fellow director Peter Bogdanovich, ‘I think every really great performance that's ever happened in movies — up to now, anyway — has been in black-and-white.’ Few would agree with him now (or even in 1992), and perhaps this is how anti-CGI sentiment will sound in thirty years. Acting musicianship student Kit/Milly Drinkwater asks, ‘Does it matter [if we use technology], if what we are getting out of it is substantial? Because that could be the new art form.’
Since it seems clear that AI and CGI are here to stay, the question becomes how actors’ likenesses and livelihoods can be protected. Creative Arts Agency (CAA), which represents actors including Zendaya and Reese Witherspoon, has teamed up with an AI company to offer its clients — for a fee — the chance to store a digital replica of themselves. This data can then be shared and used at the actors' discretion. While this is a step in the right direction, offering that ownership to A-list stars doesn't help most working actors, who are struggling day-to-day to book roles. ‘That's good, that they can own themselves, but at the same time, who else gets to do that? Not me,' says Drinkwater. ‘I haven't been invited.’
For most actors, all-out resistance to CGI augmentation or body scanning is impossible. Someone as famous as Keanu Reeves can negotiate a clause in his contracts prohibiting digital changes to his performance, but, Farish notes, ‘The problem that we have is, if you've just come out of film school, you've been an extra in a film, you're a D-list actor — if you come up to a big studio or even a medium sized production company and you say, “Yeah, you can use my image, but you're not allowed to use anything to do with AI or CGI or any digital manipulation”, what's that production company going to say? They're going to say, “There's the door. We'll find someone else. See you later, don't let the door hit you on the way out.”’
Drinkwater is pragmatic about the direction the industry is headed. ‘If you want to be in things or make it big you are going to have to face the fact that your voice might be generated, your face might be generated, anything about you could be generated,’ she says. ‘I think the most important thing is whether actors have the right to own those parts of themselves, especially if it's being used commercially.’ Protections need to serve all performers, from the A-list down, and the only way to do this is with strong actors’ unions that push legislation. Farish concluded, ‘if we can start putting in responsible guidelines now, then I'm hopeful that in the years to come it'll just be common sense that you always ask for someone's permission.’
Madeline Pritchard has been an Editorial Assistant for TV Choice and its sister publication Total TV Guide for three years. Madeline mainly covers film for the magazines, but she has a soft spot for American prestige TV and anarchic Channel 4 comedy shows.