What It’s Like to Be the Mom of a Baby Actor

If you’ve ever seen a baby on a TV show and wondered, Whose baby is that and how much did they get paid?, you’re not alone. Casting calls for infants can make it seem like a pretty plum gig — they don’t have to do much, after all. But it’s a tough business these days, says Anne Henry, the co-founder of Biz Parents, a foundation that educates parents of child performers. “One reason is the decline of the entertainment industry in general,” she says. The bigger culprit: AI. “It is much easier and cheaper to create an AI baby than to hire a real one,” she adds. “For print work — even easier. Sora can make you a decent layout in seconds.”

For the parents who can still get their kids in front of a camera: Is it worth it? Here, three moms of current and former baby actors share what it’s like to manage their children’s gigs and income — often while juggling their own full-time jobs and other kids, too.

“He got signed when he was 10 days old and got his first role at 6 weeks.”

—Sarah Girgenti, mom of a working 4-year-old and 2-year-old, Los Angeles

I was an actor myself before I had kids. When I got pregnant, I tried to do some pregnancy acting, but that was during the middle of COVID, so there wasn’t much going on. Then, after my son was born, I thought it would be cool to see if he could get any roles. I’ve always enjoyed acting so much that I wanted to give him opportunities to do it, too. So I submitted the newborn pictures that we took in the hospital to a couple of kids’ agencies. He got signed when he was 10 days old and got his first role at 6 weeks, for the show Gaslit with Julia Roberts. It was cool, but it was also scary for me, as a first-time mom, because that was one of his first outings. No one else had touched him yet, besides me and my family. I wasn’t used to bringing him out or having him around other people at all.

I didn’t know what to expect, but I wound up really enjoying it. They had a trailer ready for him and we were in there by ourselves except for when it was time to shoot. For a baby so little, they only shoot 20 minutes, max. And the time limit on set was two hours. They had three babies there, just in case they couldn’t get what they needed in 20 minutes. You never really know which baby is going to wind up in the final version. No one else touched him; I dressed him in the white onesie they gave me, and then I carried him to the bassinet for the scene, they shot it, and then I picked him straight up. For that shoot, they were paying $500 an hour, so he made $1,000 on his first day.

He booked probably five more jobs in his first six months — a few print things, like catalogues and ad campaigns, and a pilot. I think it worked in his favor that he was always on the small side. He was under six pounds when he was born, and he didn’t reach ten pounds until he was about 6 months old. When babies are under ten pounds, they can play newborns — it’s just an industry standard. So I think that’s why he booked so frequently, because he was small but older than most babies his size.

He’s continued to act as he’s gotten older and got his first speaking role when he was about 3.5 years old. The script was very simple. Like, “What’s your favorite animal?” He loves it. And I’m proud that he’s able to comfortably speak to adults; most kids don’t have that skill at his age. He’s definitely had toddler moments at auditions, and then he won’t book the job. For the most part he knows what to do. When we go to an audition or a shoot, I always try to make it a special day, and we’ll go to the zoo or go to a restaurant afterwards. As long as he still wants to do it, then I’ll let him do it.

My daughter is signed at the same talent agency — actually, all three of us are. I didn’t sign her up right away because I had a longer recovery after she was born. She’s gone to some auditions.

For child actors in California to get paid, you have to open a special account called a Coogan account. It’s kind of like a savings account for working minors, so it’s in their name and they get access to it when they reach 18. A certain percentage of what they get paid has to go in the Coogan account, minus the agency fee. But I just put everything he makes in there — it’s probably about $20,000 now. I’m saving it for him. It’ll be a nice surprise when he gets older.

“On set, there’s always someone called a baby wrangler, and their job is to make your baby smile and feel comfortable. They have all these different props and they know how to imitate animal sounds.”

—Tiffany Jiang, mom of a working 1-year-old

When my son was 6 months old, I realized that I didn’t have any decent photos of him. Instead of paying a photographer, my husband had the idea of submitting him to a casting call. We were very naïve, thinking that it would be straightforward and then we’d get nice photos out of it. So I just did a quick Google search for casting calls and submitted him. The next Monday, I got an email from an agency asking for more photos — they call them digitals. So I had him sit up against a white backdrop in a solid outfit, took a couple of photos, and did an interview. A week later, another agency contacted us, and we signed with them.

Jayden got his first job a month later, last June. It was an ad for Easy Peasy Kids, the clothing company. Then his first commercial was for the New York Times. He was also the baby double for the Lexus and Wicked commercial, so he got to work with the director Jon M. Chu.

We live in New York, but we’ve flown to Atlanta, Miami, and L.A. for shoots. Whenever we have to fly somewhere, I book refundable flights because they let you know if you’re on hold maybe a week or so in advance, but you don’t get confirmation until one or two days before. We have to pay for hotels and travel ourselves. But I’m into the points-and-miles game, so I know how to get decently priced flights that way. If we have to travel, the payment does need to be worth it. I won’t go to Atlanta if they’re paying under $300; we can fly there and back in the same day. For Miami, because it’s farther, it would have to be an overnight, so the rate would need to be $300 to $500. And then for L.A., which we’ve done once, I probably need $1,000. Most print work pays $100 to $150 an hour. Commercial work pays a little more. The lowest he’s made in a commercial gig was probably $550, and the most was $4,800. In terms of what I’ve spent, because of points and miles, it’s probably less than $1,000 on flights and hotels, probably close to $600 or $700.

All the money that Jayden makes goes into his own accounts. I don’t reimburse myself for travel fees or anything. In New York State, I opened a UTMA account for him, which allows us to save and invest his earnings in his name. If you work in California, you need a Coogan account specifically, but you can’t have a UTMA account. So I set up both for him, but his Coogan account doesn’t have much in it. For the most part, any earnings he gets go directly into the UTMA account, and I invest it in the S&P 500 for him. Then, because he has earned income, I opened up a Roth IRA for him, and I can match his contributions up to the max, which was $7,500 for 2025. So during the six months he was working last year, before agency fees, he made $10,700. After agency fees, it was a little more than $8,000. That’s grown in the market, so now there’s probably around $9,000 in his UTMA account. And with our matching contributions in his Roth IRA, he probably has around $8,000 in there.

Jayden has done mostly print work. For TV and film, they usually only want twins because there’s a lot of labor laws that govern how long a baby can work per day. And Jayden is not a twin, obviously. For print work, they care a lot about the size of the baby, because that determines what clothing size they will wear. On a monthly basis, we have to take digitals and measure him. I also have a scale at home where I have to weigh him. And then I also have to make videos, which they call self-tapes.

When we have to fly to a set, I have to take time off work. But if it’s local, usually a member of my family or my husband’s family can take him. All our family is in the tristate area. I am a risk manager at a bank and my husband does interventional cardiology as a physician assistant. He works three days a week with 12-hour shifts, so he’s usually free two days a week to do shoots.

I think Jayden has an advantage in that there’s not a lot of Asian American representation. We’re probably one of the very few Asian American baby models in the industry. There are a lot of beautiful babies, but a lot of these major companies want visual diversity, too. We’ll do this for as long as Jayden wants to.

There was only one shoot when he really wasn’t into it. He was going through a really clingy phase, so I’d put him down and try to step away and he’d start crying again. On set, there’s always someone called a baby wrangler, and their job is to make your baby smile and feel comfortable. They have all these different props and they know how to imitate animal sounds. So the baby wrangler was trying hard, but all Jayden wanted was his mom. There was really nothing I could do.

Production never tells the agency or us when the photos come out, so we have to find it on our own. For example, Jayden did a shoot for Huggies Baby Wear and I knew he was on the website, but I didn’t know that he had his own poster at Macy’s Herald Square. Another mom I know saw it, took a picture, and sent it to me. I really wanted to see it for myself, so we went to Macy’s and we walked into the children’s section on the seventh floor and I saw his poster just right there. I was pointing to the poster, showing Jayden, saying, “Hey, baby, is that you? Is that you?” And then people started gathering around, taking photos of us with the poster. I spoke to the Macy’s manager and she was like, “This is the first time I got to meet a baby from the posters in person. I always thought this baby was AI.” And I was like, “No, he’s real.”

“They’re so little, they don’t understand that they’ll have all this money someday.”

—Kim Friedman, mom to two sets of twins, ages 6 and 8, working since infancy; Savannah, Georgia

I never set out to have my children be actors. After my older twins were born, I started a twin playgroup in Savannah, where I live. That’s how a casting director found me when they were 10 months old. They found my playgroup, contacted me on Facebook Messenger, and said, “We need a set of twins for this movie filming in Savannah, and we think your boys would be perfect.” So I brought the babies to set and it was the live-action remake of Lady and the Tramp. That was their very first movie.

When babies are on set, they are treated like they’re the principal role. In Georgia, not only do you have a set teacher, but you also have a child-labor coordinator and a set nurse. So I had three people helping me. Babies can’t have speaking parts, so it’s considered a background role. I think they got paid $250 to $500 per day, each. Even though Georgia does not require a Coogan account, I opened one anyway. I also set up trusts for them. I also made sure that they had work permits in Georgia, New York, and California. It’s easy to get a work permit for a baby, because you don’t need their school to sign off. You just need a doctor to say that they are physically capable of working. Once they’re over 5, you need the school to say that their attendance and grades are good, too.

My second twins got cast in WandaVision, with Elizabeth Olsen, when they were about 3 months old. So we spent three or four months on that set with Marvel. They almost didn’t cast us — the casting notice wanted a set of twin infants, and I submitted mine, but the casting director said they were too old to play newborns. And I thought to myself, Wait a minute. They’re 3 months old, but they only weigh seven pounds. So I called her back and said, “Please put them in front of the director. They’re 3 months old, but they’re very tiny.” So she did, and they became the hero babies. That’s when I started getting a little more assertive.

There were six sets of twins for WandaVision. They were rotating babies in and out, but the director fell in love with my babies. So every time the camera’s on the face, it’s my babies. On that set, I learned to ask, “What will the baby be doing in the scene?” Then, knowing what they needed, I could help make that scene the very best. If the baby’s supposed to be napping in the scene, don’t nap them beforehand. If baby’s going to be eating, then don’t feed them beforehand. In episode five, the babies are crying. And it’s because I knew they were supposed to be fussy. So I held off on giving them their bottle. They shot the scene in 20 minutes, and then I gave them their bottle.

A lot of people think that we get flown around and put up in hotels whenever the boys are cast in something. But if we go anywhere, I book everything myself. And I am doing it all alone. I’m a single mom of two sets of twins, and I work full time. I will reimburse our travel expenses from whatever they make, and then the rest goes into their trust account. They’re so little, they don’t understand that they’ll have this money someday. What they do understand is that when we wrap for the day, I’ll let them pick out a prize or do something special. Last summer, my older twins worked every week for about three months and got paid the weekly SAG rate, which is about $1,500 I think.

We’re not in this for the money. We’re doing it because the kids love it and they’re good at it. When they come home from school, they’ll ask, “Did I get an audition?” On weekends, they act in student films at the Savannah College of Art and Design for free. They just love making movies.

I have a few pointers for other parents of babies who want to get into this industry. One is to show up on set ready to go. Have your kids already fed, diaper changed. We have showed up on many sets and the baby goes straight to the camera. If your baby has stranger danger, it’s probably not best for them. They don’t have time for your baby to warm up and get to know whoever else is in the scene. So you have to know your kids. Can your kid go up and hug someone that they just met?

You also have to be flexible. Sometimes I get a phone call at ten o’clock at night: “Hey, your kids just booked this film.” I’ve got to put my pen down and say, “Okay, we’ll be there tomorrow.” Because if you say no, they just call the next kid in line. Suddenly I’m flying out the next morning with four children. Luckily, I can work remotely. I’m a paralegal, so I do tax law. When we’re on set, I do most of my work after we get back to the hotel at night.

At this point, we try not to do any background roles unless the camera’s on the children’s face. They have to be recognizable. It’s too hard on me to juggle four small children and the kids not even being seen.

Email your money conundrums to mytwocents@nymag.com (and read our submission terms here.)

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