LOS ANGELES (AP) \u2014 The union that represents tens of thousands of actors<\/a> and other entertainment and media professionals has elected Sean Astin as its new president.<\/p>\n On Friday, SAG-AFTRA elected Astin \u2014 an actor who appeared in \u201cThe Lord of the Rings,\u201d \u201cStranger Things\u201d and \u201cRudy\u201d \u2014 to succeed Fran Drescher as its president. Astin is the son of the late Academy Award-winning actress Patty Duke and John Astin, who starred in the 1960s TV series \u201cThe Addams Family.\u201d<\/p>\n Sean Astin defeated Chuck Slavin in a 79% to 21% vote. Michelle Hurd was elected secretary-treasurer.<\/p>\n Patty Duke, Sean Astin’s mother, served as the Screen Actors Guild\u2019s president from 1985-1988.<\/p>\n According to its website, SAG-AFTRA brings together Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. It represents approximately 160,000 actors, announcers, broadcast journalists, dancers, DJs, program hosts, recording artists and others.<\/p>\n Under Drescher, the union has navigated a pair of strikes involving film and television actors<\/a> and a separate one involving video game and interactive media performers.<\/a><\/p>\n An earlier version of this story included a headline that misspelled Patty Duke\u2019s first name.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.voiceofalexandria.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" LOS ANGELES (AP) \u2014 The union that represents tens of thousands of actors and other entertainment and media professionals has elected Sean Astin as its new president. On Friday, SAG-AFTRA elected Astin \u2014 an actor who appeared in \u201cThe Lord of the Rings,\u201d \u201cStranger Things\u201d and \u201cRudy\u201d \u2014 to succeed Fran Drescher as its president. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2019887,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25177],"tags":[21741,371029,371028,22205],"class_list":["post-2019886","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-labor-unions","tag-sean-astin-president-sag-aftra","tag-television"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Sean-Astin-who-starred-in-Lord-of-the-Rings-and.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2019886","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2019886"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2019886\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2019887"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2019886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2019886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2019886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}