Hollywood's Unsung Get a Financial Close-up

HOLLYWOOD, Calif. (TheStreet) -- Hollywood is a land of dreams, celebrities and glamour.

But behind the cameras and outside the trailers, thousands of Tinseltown's lesser-known figures toil. There are assistant directors, electricians, hairdressers and extras, all of whom make the stars shine.

Behind the cameras and outside the trailers of Hollywood are workers who, working with the stars but without their massive paychecks, get into some rare financial problems.

But unlike celebrities, these workers don't pull in the massive paychecks ensured by boffo box office. The money isn't necessarily meager, but the work is unsteady.

"People think that these folks make a lot of money -- and if they were working 12 months of the year, that would be an accurate statement," says Rose Greene, a financial adviser based in Santa Monica, Calif. "But now, it is about getting one or two jobs that last eight to 12 weeks, followed by six months of nothing."

Many of Greene's clients come to her for advice on how to best manage erratic finances, meet expenses and still provide for their retirement. Their predicament is all too familiar to the scores of U.S. workers who are freelancers or face seasonal employment -- except that here you worry about money while fixing Natalie Portman's makeup or tailoring George Clooney's wardrobe.

She says her Hollywood clients typically fall into two camps.

One group is fully aware of the threat posed by the variability of their income stream and carry a real anxiety.

"Their radar is up, and when they get a gig and bring in some money, they slam it away and they put it into cash," Greene says. "It is very hard to get them to move out of low-risk, low-return investments because they are always thinking that they are going to need that money when their jobs dry up. At least when they hit a dry spell they've got that stash that they work off of. They may be stressed about it, but they are not necessarily worried about their next mortgage payment."

The other half "live in the moment and don't really want to think too far in the future," Greene says. "They do throw a little in the pot when they have a fairly consistent job, but when that dries up they just suck up everything they had put away. They just empty the tanks."