‘My mother was 4ft 11in and scared the hell out of people’ – Sean Astin on child stardom, The Lord of the Rings and surviving 45 years in Hollywood

His mother was an Oscar-winning actor who had been exploited from a young age; Astin appeared in The Goonies at just 13. Now, he has followed in his mother’s footsteps again as a union leader.

He talks Stranger Things, AI and why playing Samwise Gamgee cost him his house 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 Asti

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  ‘My mother was 4ft 11in and scared the hell out of people’ – Sean Astin on child stardom, The Lord of the Rings and surviving 45 years in Hollywood