So Hollywood actors want a pay rise? Please. These people fly Gulfstream V jets to dinner. They take baths in caviar and fill the tanks of their Range Rovers with Dom Perignon. Will Smith just earned $20 million (£10 million) for Hancock, for Pete's sake. That's not so much a salary as a GDP.

But this stereotype really isn't accurate, says the Screen Actors Guild (SAG), whose collectively bargained contract with Hollywood's major studios ran out yesterday, prompting frantic renegotiations and the threat of a strike. According to SAG, the average annual income for one of its members is a mere $52,000 (£26,000) - before the agents, lawyers and managers take their cut. But even this figure is inflated by mega-earners such as Smith. About two thirds of SAG's members earn less than $1,000 a year from acting, because they are “resting” or retired.

But while the pay's always been bad for Hollywood's young and hopeful, the availability of work is shrinking dramatically. Reality TV has reduced severely the number of acting gigs on offer, as has the increasing popularity of animated movies such as WALL-E, (left). Furthermore, as a result of cost-cutting imposed during the recent writers' strike, the TV industry has largely abandoned “pilots”.

Even voice-over gigs are drying up. Vast databases of voice actors exist online, meaning that work can be outsourced to other cities or countries. And A-listers now see nothing wrong in taking advertising work that might once have gone to the unemployed.

Aren't the actors just hastening their own obsolescence by threatening to strike? Probably. But many of SAG's 122,000 members don't care, because they've retired or moved on to other things. For them, a strike won't cost anything. Those on $1,000 a year don't have much to lose either.

Explore Film

• Film Reviews

• DVD

• Oscars

• Bollywood

Editor's choice

• Exclusive: Listen to AC/DC's Black Ice
• Burning Bush with W
• Boy George on sex, drugs and Amy Winehouse