Heather Matarazzo, best known for playing Lilly Moscovitz in The Princess Diaries, said she risked losing health insurance because she was struggling to meet the earnings requirement for coverage through the US actors’ union.
Matarazzo, 43, made the disclosure while responding to fellow actor Jack Haven, who had appealed publicly for work after discovering they were $4,000 short of the amount they personally needed to qualify for SAG-AFTRA health insurance.
“I am literally in the same boat right now,” Matarazzo wrote on Threads. “Lots of my fellow actors are.”
The Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) provides insurance to eligible members through its health plan. However, actors do not qualify simply because they are union members but by showing a minimum income or a specified number of qualifying work days.
For 2026, the minimum is $28,090. That will rise to $28,933 in 2027, with further increases scheduled for each year through 2030, according to SAG-AFTRA.
Actors can also qualify by working at least 108 eligible days during the coverage period. The union calculates those days from the covered earnings they receive for SAG-AFTRA work. Once an actor meets either requirement, they receive 12 months of health coverage.
This means an actor can boast a substantial list of film and television credits and still find themselves scrambling for enough new work to keep the insurance.
If they fall short of the earnings or work requirement, their existing coverage ends when the current benefit period expires.
The plan then offers options for continuing coverage, including COBRA, for members who qualify.
Matarazzo said the system had not always worked this way. “I remember a time when we didn’t have to earn a minimum to qualify for insurance,” she wrote. “Glad to see that Jack has gotten an offer that will let them qualify for 2027.”
Haven, known for playing Casey Gardner in all four seasons of Netflix’s Atypical and Jane Schoenbrun’s 2024 psychological horror film I Saw the TV Glow, posted a video asking the industry to hire them on a SAG-covered production.
In the video, titled Are You Casting?, Haven said they were in “a bit of an emergency situation” and needed to make $4,000 by the end of September to qualify for SAG health insurance beginning in January. “So, I guess what I am asking is if you, or anyone you know, can hire me on a set or production and pay me $4,000, I will do, pretty much, any job,” Haven said. They went on to list some of their skills, including singing, dancing, and performing accents.
The appeal appeared to work, as Haven said in a follow-up video they had received a large number of offers after the post circulated online. “I got a lot of offers,” Haven said. “So, thank you guys. Thank you for your love and your kindness. I really feel overwhelmed. I really didn’t expect this many people to see the video.”
Matarazzo’s and Haven’s pleas come at a particularly difficult time for actors trying to piece together enough union work to maintain their health healthcare.
During the 2023 actors’ strike, then SAG-AFTRA president Fran Drescher contrasted the traditional network model, in which successful shows could run for 22 to 28 episodes a season and continue for years, with streaming series that typically ran for six to 10 episodes and fewer seasons.
For actors who rely on individual jobs to build up the earnings needed for union health coverage, fewer episodes can mean fewer opportunities to reach the threshold.
Matarazzo has worked steadily across film and television since appearing as Dawn Wiener in Welcome to the Dollhouse in 1995.
She went on to play Lilly, the outspoken best friend of Anne Hathaway’s Mia Thermopolis, in The Princess Diaries and its 2004 sequel, and later appeared in Scream 3 and All I Wanna Do!.
More recently, she played Judi Spannagel, the seemingly cheerful executive assistant at Willow Hill Psychiatric Facility whose darker role in the secret LOIS programme was revealed during the second season of Netflix’s Wednesday. She also played Angela in the 2025 short film Paper Tiger.
