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When Eric Bana is not filming, he’s more than likely riding a motorcycle in a remote part of Australia. He’s been doing it since he was a kid, having grown up in a semi-industrial part of the suburbs of Melbourne on the verge of farmland. Now, it’s his solace on days off.

“It’s a vulnerable feeling, it’s an exciting feeling,” he says on a video call. “You have to be self-sufficient. You have to think worst-case scenario. What happens if I get a flat tire when it’s 120 degrees and there’s no water around? It keeps you awake.”

So when, back in 2019, Bana was given the pilot script for the Netflix limited series “Untamed,” he was immediately attracted. He would play the role of Kyle Turner, an agent in the Investigative Services Branch of the National Park Service in Yosemite — essentially a park detective. It’s a murder mystery yet set against the kind of wilderness that Bana loves.

“I just felt a kinship for Kyle immediately,” he remembers. “I don’t know if it was just like the shared love for the outdoors and how that affects our psyche and our well-being, our sense of self, our emotional journey in life — I just immediately felt very strongly for Kyle.”

In “Untamed,” Eric Bana plays Kyle Turner, an agent in the Investigative Services Branch of the National Park Service. The show is set in Yosemite National Park, though it was filmed British Columbia.

(Ricardo Hubbs / Netflix)

Bana stuck with the project through the COVID pandemic and the Hollywood strikes, allowing the series created by Mark L. Smith of “American Primeval” and daughter Elle Smith to finally hit the streaming service on Thursday. The show finds Bana’s character investigating the death of a young woman who plummets off El Capitan and into two rock climbers. The case unexpectedly connects two other traumatic incidents that have happened in the mountainous wilds — at least one of which directly involves the taciturn Kyle, grieving the death of his young son.

“He exudes that kind of sensitivity and strength at the same time,” Elle Smith says. “It allowed him to just really embody Turner. Because he’s been living in this show for so long, so many years and kept it alive and has remained passionate about it, once we got into production, he was Turner.”

“Untamed” also marks the latest in Bana’s unconventional career that has seen him touch nearly every corner of the Hollywood machine, even though he has always chosen to live in Australia when he’s not working. It never made sense for him to move to Los Angeles when many of his shoots were overseas anyway. When we chat, he’s briefly in town for “Untamed” press.

Though he started his career as a comedian in his home country, he was part of the superhero craze before it was a craze, playing the title role in Ang Lee’s “Hulk,” a movie that’s now undergone a critical reassessment. He’s been a “Star Trek” villain and a Steven Spielberg protagonist in the historical drama “Munich.” (Over the past 12 months, more and more people have been bringing up the role of the Mossad agent tasked to respond to the murder of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Summer Olympics: “With the passing of time, you realize how incredible some of the observations were,” he says.)

Though his career has touched nearly every corner of the Hollywood machine, Eric Bana has continued to live in Australia.

(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

More recently, he ventured into the world of television, playing the sociopathic John Meehan in the first season of the anthology series “Dirty John.” Bana says he tends not to think about specifically playing characters that contradict his previous work, but he understands that coming off that role probably was one of the reasons he gravitated toward Kyle in “Untamed.”

“There was no doubt that the character of John had a level of toxicity to him that was just so high,” he says, adding, “I realized that Kyle was a warmer character for the audience to follow than John.”

Before he actually got to play Kyle, he started a mini-franchise in Australia with producing partner and director Rob Connolly thanks to “The Dry” and its sequel, in which he plays another investigator reeling from a traumatic past.

For creator Mark Smith, Bana was the ideal person to embody Kyle because of his ability to convey a lot with very little dialogue.

“We felt like he was just so expressive in his eyes and his face,” Mark says. “He can do so much without saying anything, and that was crucial to this guy who really doesn’t want to speak — he doesn’t want to talk to people. He just wants to be kind of off on his own, doing his thing in the wilderness.”

Because Bana got on board early, the Smiths could start writing the rest of the scripts with him in mind. One of Bana’s requests: The more he could be on a horse, the better. In the show, Kyle eschews motor vehicles for a trusty steed, which gives him more access to the less traversed areas of the park. Bana ended up loving his horse.

“I desperately wanted to smuggle him on the plane and take him home,” he says.

Eric Bana and Lily Santiago are often seen on horseback in “Untamed.”

(Netflix)

Mark and Elle Smith conceived of the series after being sent articles about the National Park Service’s Investigative Services Branch. They were not familiar with that world but were nonetheless fascinated by this strange profession that is part FBI agent and part park ranger. Bana had visited Yosemite years ago as a solo tourist but didn’t have the chance to go again before the shoot, which took place in British Columbia.

Still, he spoke to rangers and ISB employees to get a sense of “just how crazy” some of their work can be.

“When you mix drugs, when you mix people coming from all kinds of different backgrounds and having different entitlements to the places that they’re in, it’s really interesting,” he says.

Bana understands from personal experience that the attraction to the outdoors is partially based on the fact that danger is almost always lurking around the corner. In Australia, he adds, “there’s always something trying to get you, whether it be two-legged, four-legged, eight-legged or whatever.”

On the set of “Untamed,” he was incredibly eager to see a bear — and was disappointed when it never happened.

“We had a bear guy on set who was responsible for our and the bears’ safety,” he says. “We had very strict rules around food and all that sort of stuff. I was desperate, desperate to have an encounter with a bear of the positive kind, and I never saw one.”

Elle Smith confirms that most everyone else got to see a bear. “He had really bad bear luck,” she adds.

“We felt like he was just so expressive in his eyes and his face,” says “Untamed” creator Mark L. Smith.

(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

But even with his lack of bear sightings, Bana’s love of being outside was crucial for the entire production. Mark explains he’s not the kind of star who returns to his trailer, instead pulling up a chair to hang out.

“This was a tough landscape that we were shooting in,” Elle Smith adds. “I think it really helps in terms of tone setting if your movie star is willing to get out on the rock and do the climb. It really helps the crew also feel like they’re able to do the climb.”

Bana was intoxicated by his environment — so much so that he wouldn’t want to go back to the sterility of a soundstage.

“Going to work in a studio after doing something like this — the thought of it is just debilitating creatively,” he says. “There’s something about a camera coming out of a box when the sun rises and going back when the sun goes down. There’s an energy, there’s a cadence to that.”

For his follow-up, he went back into the elements for “Apex,” an upcoming film opposite Charlize Theron, where they play a pair of rock climbers. He says he did intense training in the skill or else he would have looked like a “fool.”

And just like how Bana is willing to let the weather dictate his shooting days, he is also patient with his career. It’s one of the reasons he was willing to wait for “Untamed.”

“I’ve been in this business for a period of time now where I realize you really do have to go with the ebbs and flows and you really do have to pace yourself, but at the same time when you find something that you love you just have to try and protect it,” he says.

It’s something you could also say about the natural world, and Bana hopes that “Untamed,” even with all its dark deeds and buried secrets, encourages audiences to go see for themselves.

“I hope people enjoy the feeling of being in that space, and in a perfect world, feel motivated to go and seek them out,” he says.

He certainly will be.

Toni Gray’s phone is blowing up these days.

The head of production at Dhar Mann Studios, which makes shows for YouTube and other online platforms, said entertainment industry friends in Los Angeles had once held out before seeking work in the digital realm.

But now, with jobs few and far between at the legacy studios, they are reaching out “all the time” looking for opportunities at the Burbank-based studio, known for posting family-friendly dramas addressing topics like bullying.

Seeing some of her peers now flock to be a part of production companies built for distribution on YouTube and other online platforms is exciting for Gray, who worked in traditional television for more than a decade and joined Dhar Mann Studios in February.

“It’s giving people hope that they can get back to work again,” she said. “And it’s not just monetary hope for their house and their kids. It actually is giving their own being life again to bring their creative element.”

Pave Studios founder Max Cutler.

(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

In Hollywood’s TV and film industries, droves of workers are competing for jobs at a time when many companies are consolidating and laying off hundreds of people at a time. But one segment of the entertainment industry has emerged as a bright spot — the economy made up of people creating video for YouTube and social media.

That part of the industry, once dominated by amateurs making funny viral videos with smartphones has blossomed into a formidable entertainment force, where video creators are setting up real businesses with large studios in Southern California funded through advertising by major brands.

Dhar Mann Studios plans to add 15 positions to its staff of about 75 full-time employees. In Sherman Oaks, Pave Studios, which produces wellness- and true-crime-related shows, is adding 16 full-time workers to its staff of 67 contractors and employees.

Nationwide, there were more than 490,000 jobs supported by YouTube’s creative ecosystem last year, according to the Google-owned video platform, citing data from Oxford Economics. That’s roughly 60,000 more jobs than in 2023, YouTube said.

“It’s beginning to mature into creators really building businesses,” said Thomas Kim, YouTube’s director of product management for creator monetization. “We see more and more of that, and that also means that the number of employees and help that they need to sustain their business has grown over time.”

Sean Atkins, chief executive of Dhar Mann Studios, called it a big growth opportunity in the market. YouTube is a major player in streaming, representing 12.5% of U.S. TV viewing in May, according to Nielsen, more than streaming services including Netflix and Amazon Prime Video.

“Everything is so new and nascent,” said Atkins, a former president at MTV. “I imagine, particularly when you walk around our studio … that this is what it looked like in the ‘20s when MGM and Disney and Warner [Bros.] were [founded]. Just this enthusiastic chaos where everyone’s trying to figure out what this environment is.”

The growth in Southern California influencer businesses is a boon to the local production economy that is otherwise struggling. L.A. County saw a 27% decline to 108,564 employees from 2022 to 2024 in the motion picture and sound recording industries, according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Many Hollywood workers have struggled to find roles, as studios cut down on their programming after the 2023 actor and writer strikes and after overspending during the streaming wars. For years, productions have fled the area to take advantage of lucrative financial incentives out of state and abroad. Production in L.A. County also took a hit following devastating wildfires in January.

Meanwhile, the amount of employment in the creator economy is trending up, according to the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp. Total workers in the L.A. County creator economy, composed of businesses such as media streaming distribution services and social networks, as well as independent artists, writers and performers, increased 5% to 70,012 from 2022 to 2024, LAEDC said. Companies in the creator economy space also increased 5% to 46,425 businesses during the same time period, according to LAEDC.

The bleak job market has caused more people who have worked in traditional studio and TV networks to apply for jobs at digital media companies that produce content for platforms such as YouTube or work with influencers who are growing their staffs.

The migration reflects changing realities in the business. Consumers’ habits have shifted, where more people are watching YouTube on TV screens these days instead of on smartphones in the U.S., eating into territory held by broadcast and cable television. Video creators have adapted, building production teams and expanding into podcasts, merchandise and sometimes scoring streaming deals.

For example, one of YouTube’s top creators, Jimmy Donaldson, known as MrBeast, has a reality competition show on Amazon Prime Video, sells products such as Feastables chocolates and has brand partnerships and sponsorships. His North Carolina holding company, Beast Industries, employs more than 500 people.

Kyle Hjelmeseth, chief executive of talent representation firm G&B Digital Management, said he is receiving more calls from people coming with traditional media backgrounds seeking collaborations with influencers.

“Five years ago, it would have been very different,” he said. “Anytime that somebody from Hollywood or the entertainment complex talked about creators, it was with such a different lens … a little bit like nose in the air.”

His company, which has 25 contractors, part-time and full time employees, added four people last month with plans to hire more.

“All the pressures of what’s happening in Hollywood and the growth of the creator economy [are] crashing into each other in this moment, and that’s why we’re having a conversation about jobs, because there’s such a shift in the energy, and we’re certainly feeling it,” he said.

Morgan Absher, left, and Kaelyn Moore, right, record “Clues” podcast at Pave Studios.

(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

Pave Studios launched last year with fewer than 10 employees and now has grown to 67 contractors and employees. Part of that growth is fueled by the increasing audience for its videos and podcasts available on platforms including YouTube, Spotify and Apple Podcasts. The company is hiring for roles including executive producers, with a pay range of $95,000 to $145,000, depending on the show, said founder Max Cutler.

“As we grow and as the business becomes more complicated, you need more specialists and more people,” Cutler said. “Video is definitely a leading growth area for us.”

Jen Passovoy joined Pave Studios in January as a producer, after working for 10 years at Paramount on competition series such as “RuPaul’s Drag Race” and “Ink Master.”

“Coming from a traditional TV background, I was drawn to how nimble and audience-focused the company is,” Passovoy said in an email. “There’s less red tape and more room to actually create. You get the energy of a startup with the same high-quality content you’d expect from a major studio.”

Passovoy, 34, said the job market for traditional studio and TV network workers is really tough right now.

“I know more people out of work right now than working, which says a lot,” she said. “The traditional TV model just doesn’t exist in the same way anymore. Budgets are shrinking and the jobs that used to be steady aren’t there. There have been so many layoffs across the industry, and it’s forced a lot of incredibly talented people to rethink how and where they create.”

Skills that people develop in traditional studio and TV roles can translate to digital-first roles, including video editors for influencers and digital media companies, industry observers said.

The creator economy also has more specialized roles, such as thumbnail designers — people who create the images used to tease videos on sites including YouTube. Those jobs can pay six figures annually, as they can be instrumental for getting audiences to click on those videos.

Roster, a hiring platform that lists job postings in the creator space, said the number of employers signing up to hire on the site has increased by nearly 80% from January to June 2025. Based on a sampling of 1,430 creator job posts in 2025, Roster said the most popular open position was video editor (representing 42.5%), followed by thumbnail designer (16.1%) and producer (10.6%).

There are downsides. Not all jobs are full-time. Many creators opt to hire freelancers.

“Their production needs need to expand and shrink like an accordion,” said Sherry Wong, CEO of Roster. “That’s why we see a lot of creators, even if they’re really big established creators, they are hiring freelancers, contractors, and being able to keep it as lean as possible.”

With so many people looking for work, there‘s intense competition for those jobs, and the ways to apply can be creative and involved.

Miami-based creator Jenny Hoyos found freelancers through a hiring challenge she hosted on Roster. Applicants were given 10 minutes of raw video footage and instructed to edit it down to a video short, roughly 30 to 60 seconds long.

Hoyos, 20, requested that applicants create a final product that was engaging, cohesive and matched her specific style. She received more than 100 submissions.

While there were strong contenders from California, the winners ended up being from Brazil and India. They became her two go-to freelancers, who she said are essentially working an amount equivalent to full-time editors.

This method of seeking talent was Hoyos’ way of making sure the people she brought on to her team were willing to go the extra mile, she said. Those hoping to break into the digital media world don’t necessarily have to have grown up with YouTube and social media like she did, but they do have to “commit to being addicted to watching” content, she said.

Not everyone who works for YouTube creators gets paid.

Screenwriter Natalie Badillo isn’t earning a salary while she tries to build up an audience on YouTube. Badillo, who sold a self-titled project to HBO Max a few years ago, said she was looking for a way to “not wait 8 billion years for a TV show to get picked up,” and creating a YouTube channel, “Great Job Nat,” was a way to get her material out into the world.

“Why wait for somebody to throw you a party when you can just throw your own party?” she said.

Badillo draws on her connections with folks from the traditional film and TV world to produce the YouTube videos. While the channel is getting up and running, collaborators work for low pay or simply for the fun of it and to gain experience. Still, her ambitions are big. “I want to be the Jon Stewart of the West,” she said.

The pay disparities can be an issue for people from traditional media industries looking for jobs. While some programs featuring influencers and vertical excerpts of TV shows and movies are covered by union agreements, other projects don’t have those protections.

“With temporary hiring, it’s like everything else in Hollywood — you either need to have another job that balances things out or you need to get to a critical mass of enough work on enough different projects,” said Kevin Klowden, executive director at Milken Institute Finance. “The number of sustainable Hollywood jobs has shrunk.”

But as the two worlds collide, traditional media companies are already paying attention to the popularity of creator shows and are trying to find ways to partner with influencers. Amazon earlier this year announced more seasons of MrBeast’s reality competition series “Beast Games,” and digital media companies are adding people with traditional media backgrounds to their staffs.

“It’s still a lot more tiptoeing,” Hjelmeseth said. “Everybody’s kind of like looking at each other from across the room, like, ‘Should we dance?’”

Josh O’Connor in the movie “The Mastermind.”

(Festival de Cannes)

Leave it to Kelly Reichardt, who turned Michelle Williams into a seething sculptor with frenemy issues in “Showing Up,” to make the gentlest, most self-deprecating heist movie imaginable. As such, she’s invented a whole new genre. The year is 1970 but don’t expect anything Scorsesian to go down here. Rather, this one’s about a half-smart art thief (Josh O’Connor, leaning into loser vibes) who, after snatching canvases of a lesser-known modernist from an understaffed Massachusetts museum, suffers grievously as his plan unravels. Reichardt, herself the daughter of law enforcement, is more interested in the aftermath: hypnotically awkward kitchen conversations with disappointed family members who won’t lend him any more money and would rather he just clear out. (The exquisite period-perfect cast includes Alana Haim, Bill Camp, Hope Davis and John Magaro.) Danny Ocean types need not apply, but if you hear skittering jazz music as the soundtrack of desperation, your new favorite comedy is here. — JR

NEW YORK — Christine Farro has cut back on the presents she sends her grandchildren on their birthdays, and she’s put off taking two cats and a dog for their shots. All her clothes come from thrift stores and most of her vegetables come from her garden. At 73, she has cut her costs as much as she can to live on a tight budget.

But it’s about to get far tighter.

As the Trump administration resumes collections on defaulted student loans, a surprising population has been caught in the crosshairs: hundreds of thousands of older Americans whose decades-old debts now put them at risk of having their Social Security checks garnished.

“I worked ridiculous hours. I worked weekends and nights. But I could never pay it off,” says Farro, a retired child welfare worker in Santa Ynez, Calif.

Like millions of debtors with federal student loans, Farro had her payments and interest paused by the government five years ago when the pandemic thrust many into financial hardship. That grace period ended in 2023 and, earlier this month, the Department of Education said it would restart “involuntary collections” by garnishing paychecks, tax refunds and Social Security retirement and disability benefits. Farro previously had her Social Security garnished and expects it to restart.

Farro’s loans date back 40 years. She was a single mother when she got a bachelor’s degree in developmental psychology and when she discovered she couldn’t earn enough to pay off her loans, she went back to school and got a master’s degree. Her salary never caught up. Things only got worse.

Around 2008, when she consolidated her loans, she was paying $1,000 a month, but years of missed payments and piled-on interest meant she was barely putting a dent in a bill that had ballooned to $250,000. When she sought help to resolve her debt, she says the loan company had just one suggestion.

“They said, ‘Move to a cheaper state,’” says Farro, who rents a 400-square-foot casita from a friend. “I realized I was living in a different reality than they were.”

Student loan debt among older people has grown at a staggering rate, in part due to rising tuitions that have forced more people to borrow greater sums. People 60 and older hold an estimated $125 billion in student loans, according to the National Consumer Law Center, a six-fold increase from 20 years ago.

That has led Social Security beneficiaries who have had their payments garnished to balloon by 3,000% — from approximately 6,200 beneficiaries to 192,300 — between 2001 and 2019, according to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

This year, an estimated 452,000 people aged 62 and older had student loans in default and are likely to experience the Department of Education’s renewed forced collections, according to the January report from CFPB.

Debbie McIntyre, a 62-year-old adult education teacher in Georgetown, Ky., is among them. She dreams of retiring and writing more historical fiction, and of boarding a plane for the first time since high school. But her husband has been out of work on disability for two decades and they’ve used credit cards to get by on his meager benefits and her paycheck. Their rent will be hiked $300 when their lease renews. McIntyre doesn’t know what to do if her paycheck is garnished.

She floats the idea of bankruptcy, but that won’t automatically clear her loans, which are held to a different standard than other debt. She figures if she picks up extra jobs babysitting or tutoring, she could put $50 toward her loans here and there. But she sees no real solution.

“I don’t know what more I can do,” says McIntyre, who is too afraid to check what her loan balance is. “I’ll never get out of this hole.”

Braxton Brewington of the Debt Collective debtors union says it’s striking how many older people dial into the organization’s calls and attend its protests. Many of them, he says, should have had their debts canceled but fell victim to a system “riddled with flaws and illegalities and flukes.” Many whose educations have left them in late-life debt have, in fact, paid back the principal on their loans, sometimes several times over, but still owe more due to interest and fees.

For those who are subject to garnishment, Brewington says, the results can be devastating.

“We hear from people who skip meals. We know people who dilute their medication or cut their pills in half. People take drastic measures like pulling all their savings out or dissolving their 401ks,” he says. “We know folks that have been driven into homelessness.”

Collections on defaulted loans may have restarted no matter who was president, though the Biden administration had sought to limit the amount of income that could be garnished. Federal law protects just $750 of Social Security benefits from garnishment, an amount that would put a debtor far below the poverty line.

“We’re basically providing people with federal benefits with one hand and taking them away with another,” says Sarah Sattelmeyer of the New America think tank.

Linda Hilton, a 76-year-old retired office worker from Apache Junction, Ariz., went through garnishment before COVID and says she will survive it again. But flights to see her children, occasional meals at a restaurant and other pleasures of retired life may disappear.

“It’s going to mean restrictions,” says Hilton. “There won’t be any travel. There won’t be any frills.”

Some debtors have already received notice about collections. Many more are living in fear. President Trump has signed an executive order calling for the Department of Education’s dismantling and, for those seeking answers about their loans, mass layoffs have complicated getting calls answered.

While Education Secretary Linda McMahon says restarting collections is a necessary step for debtors “both for the sake of their own financial health and our nation’s economic outlook,” even some of Trump’s most fervent supporters are questioning a move that will make their lives harder.

Randall Countryman, 55, of Bonita, Calif., says a Biden administration proposal to forgive some student debt didn’t strike him as fair, but he’s not sure Trump’s approach is either. He supported Trump but wishes the government made case-by-case decisions on debtors. Countryman thinks Americans don’t realize how many older people are affected by policies on student loans, often thought to be the turf of the young, and how difficult it can be for them to repay.

“What’s a young person’s problem today,” he says, “is an old person’s problem tomorrow.”

Countryman started working on a degree while in prison, then continued it at the University of Phoenix when he was released. He started growing nervous as he racked up loan debt and never finished his degree. He’s worked a host of different jobs, but finding work has often been complicated by his criminal record.

He lives off his wife’s Social Security check and the kindness of his mother-in-law. He doesn’t know how they’d get by if the government demands repayment.

“I kind of wish I never went to school in the first place,” he says.

Sedensky writes for the Associated Press.