Sandy in The Player (1992)

Sandy from The Player (1992) is someone that many people can relate aspects of their own lives with. She is a young woman working as a secretary experiencing the stress of a new job. Her fear in losing her job is witnessed within the first minute of the film where she can be seen running through the doors and outside frantically. Her running being the cause of a phone call she answered and the belittlement she receives from another secretary who is training her (Celia). Her position in the company’s line of command makes her almost a minor minor character, and she is clearly type casted. Sandy is not only seen for her “young woman’s social and sexual conduct” as mentioned in “Promoting Hollywood Extra Girl (1935)” as a character but potentially as an actor. Her appearance is minimal, and her character space takes up a smaller narrative compared to others, but we could still examine her further. For the few minutes Sandy is on screen our attention is reoriented to her world and what she experiences. In one scene with our major character Griffin played by Tim Robbins is interacting with Celia, Sandy can be seen in the background listening in to private conversations. It gives the illusion that Sandy will make her way up in the chain of command through workplace conversation acting as a gate keeper to her superiors. Sandy’s character allows us to see what life would have been like for actors in that time. Her experience on screen would have been similar to off screen. As said in promoting Hollywood extra girl (1935), “these young woman, adrift in an urban landscape, comprising an opportunistic labour surplus at a time when any job was difficult to find”. Sandy is not treated as a thinking object but as another disposable piece on the board among her colleagues. Her character, however, brings the major characters interaction and life more significant and she adds a completeness to the film.