Sean Astin is showing me around his new office. There’s framed movie prints on the walls, piles of paperwork and a stack of boxes of Stranger Things Funko Pops. “If you were here, you could look out this window and see a 10-storey building with our iconic Sag-Aftra logo on it,” he says proudly on video call, gesturing out of the window to the Los Angeles skyline. “But you just have to trust me that it’s there.” He shows me a framed photo of his mother, Patty Duke, aged 16, with the best supporting actress Oscar she won in 1963 (for playing Helen Keller in The Miracle Worker), and even more proudly, a framed copy of Duke’s business card from when she was president of the Screen Actors Guild in the mid-80s – the role he now occupies (Sag merged with the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists in 2012). The 10 months of his presidency “has been a whirlwind”, he says.
It’s still slightly jarring to see Astin in a suit and tie, lanyard around his neck. We’re more accustomed to seeing him in the handwoven cloak and hairy feet of Samwise Gamgee, loyally accompanying mister Frodo into Mordor in The Lord of the Rings. Or as Winona Ryder’s short-lived partner in Stranger Things (before a Demodog got to him). Or as never-say-die college football underdog “Rudy” Ruettiger in the 1993 biopic. Or, for viewers of his own vintage, as plucky leader Mikey in The Goonies. Astin has been a member of the union he now represents for 45 of his 55 years, but he seems to have survived the perils of child stardom and a Hollywood upbringing remarkably unscathed. In fact, you could see it all as preparation for the role.
