In response to Mr. Forrest Frields letter in the March 5 T.O. Acorn, let me explain.

For almost 20 years other states and Canada have been offering large tax incentives to Los Angeles film companies to get them to leave L.A. and shoot elsewhere, and it's worked.

It's called "runaway production," and it's done great harm to L.A.'s actor pool, caterers, clothing stores, gas stations, restaurants, lumber and hardware stores, flower shops, landscaping suppliers, wardrobe designers, makeup artists, carpenters, lighting technicians, painters, graphic artists, camera operators and assistants, film and video editors, sound technicians and editors and more, many of whom are your neighbors right here in Conejo Valley.

No films, no work.

The acting community has been fighting to stop runaway production for years.

Please don't judge Hollywood by the highly paid A-list "stars" or the "sick and infamous," as you called them. Those people do not represent the mass of hardworking, in-the-trenches professional actors who hit the streets every day struggling for their next underpaid job.

For every million-dollar "star," there are hundreds of talented, hardworking actors who are just trying to make the rent.

At any one time, 90 percent of the membership of the Screen Actor's Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists are unemployed, and most or them make only union scale plus 10 percent that goes to their agents.

Fewer films and television shows shot here means fewer actors working.

The cost of just staying in the business under these conditions is prohibitive.

Why do actors do it? Awards? Statuettes? Red carpet? No. They do it because they love it. They've acted for no pay at all. At worst, they've paid to act. They love it. I loved it for 25 years- - more than anything I'd ever done.

I retired in 2005 because there simply wasn't enough work to make it worth the daily grind of trying to get "the job."

Stop getting your information from gossip shows on television or supermarket tabloids. Ken Thorley Newbury Park