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Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, the executive director and chief negotiator for the actors\u2019 union, has spent the past two decades toiling behind the scenes during contract talks. The spotlight, he knows, is for the SAG-AFTRA president, usually a well-known performer like the current office holder, Fran Drescher<\/a>.<\/p>\n But ever since the guild went on strike<\/a> on July 14 for the first time in 40 years, things have been different.<\/p>\n In the past three months, Mr. Crabtree-Ireland, 51, has stepped out from behind the negotiating table and made fiery speeches, walked film festival red carpets and reached out to the union\u2019s younger members via Instagram reels. His more frequent appearances have given people ample opportunity to see the tattoos on his forearms, a visual clue to how much the professional and the personal are intertwined for him. On the right are five symbols \u2014 a record, a play button, a film reel, a megaphone and a radio antenna \u2014 representing the contracts he\u2019s negotiated for union members in the music, film\/TV, radio, commercial, video and broadcast industries. On his left arm is a coil with five loops that represent the five children he has adopted with his husband, John.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not just a job for me,\u201d he said in an interview. \u201cThis is where I\u2019ve spent the vast majority of my professional career, and I really care about what happens to our members.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Now, however, Mr. Crabtree-Ireland is facing his most challenging public moment. Come Monday, when the union returns to the negotiating table with the studios in an attempt to resolve the strike that has much of Hollywood at a standstill, all eyes will be on him.<\/p>\n (Ted Sarandos, a co-chairman of Netflix; David Zaslav, the chief executive of Warner Bros. Discovery; Donna Langley, the chief content officer of Universal Pictures; and Robert A. Iger, Disney\u2019s chief executive, will also be in attendance, along with the chief negotiator for the studios, Carol Lombardini<\/a>.)<\/p>\n When the Writers Guild of America agreed to a tentative deal<\/a> for its 11,500 members last Sunday, that left SAG-AFTRA as the lone union holding out for a new deal. How this week\u2019s negotiations go will therefore affect not just the tens of thousands of people in Mr. Crabtree-Ireland\u2019s guild, but everyone in the entertainment industry.<\/p>\n The dual strikes have been devastating financially, with more than 100,000 behind-the-scenes workers like location scouts, makeup artists and lighting technicians out of work. The California economy has lost an estimated $5 billion. Major studios like Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount Global have seen their stock prices drop. Analysts have estimated that the global box office will lose as much as $1.6 billion in ticket sales because of movies whose releases were pushed back to next year.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m 100 percent sure that he\u2019s a deal maker, a realist and that he understands the horse trade,\u201d Bryan Lourd, chief executive of Creative Artists Agency, said of Mr. Crabtree-Ireland. \u201cHe has the list of what he\u2019s got to get and what he can lose.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Mr. Crabtree-Ireland said that he was encouraged by the tentative deal reached by the writers and that he was anxious to get a deal done for the actors. But he added that he did not feel pressure because the actors were the only ones on strike. The push he feels, he said, was \u201cbecause of the economic impact and the impact on our members and others.\u201d<\/p>\n