A direct message popped up on facebook from a friend I hadn’t seen in close to a decade.

“Hey!” she wrote. “Are you in the movie Divergent?? I was watching it on a flight and swore I saw you?!”

Every few years, I get a question like this over social media or from a coworker stopping by my desk.

When I first began studying theater at Columbia College Chicago, I would scan the local papers and callboards for opportunities as a movie extra (or, as the tax forms say, “background artist”). I had learned about the concept from my dad, who spent a day on the set of The Untouchables when it was filmed in Chicago in the mid-’80s. He appears over Kevin Costner’s shoulder as a blond background blur in one scene. When I was young, I thought this sounded like the coolest gig — hanging out on a movie set, getting paid while rubbing elbows with celebrities, potentially ending up on the big screen.

After attending an open call at which I waited hours in line to drop off a photo and fill out a stat sheet (age, height, weight, hair color, ethnicity, etc.), I was hired for my first job as an extra in High Fidelity, starring Evanston’s own John Cusack. I took the Red Line to a Rogers Park address provided to me by a production assistant, hauling a duffel bag full of my own clothes as possible wardrobe choices. The extras’ holding area was in the basement of a church within walking distance from the set. An assistant from the costume department had me show her the outfits I’d brought, and she directed me to change into a ringer T-shirt, jeans, and a windbreaker (I’d be playing a college student, big stretch).

Being an extra on a major studio movie set may sound glamorous, but the reality involves painfully early (or overnight) call times, folding tables of stale doughnuts, and hours of waiting around, all for minimum wage. In many ways, it’s like jury duty, but with a higher chance of seeing someone who’s been on the cover of People.

After being led to the set, a residential street outside the main character’s apartment, I was paired with another young woman, and we were given brief, simple directions. When the assistant director called “Background!” we were to walk down the sidewalk, having a natural-looking conversation. So my scene partner and I would take turns whisper-narrating exactly what John Cusack was doing — “He’s walking. … Now he’s punching the air! … Now he’s saying his lines!” — while the other smiled and nodded.

Upon hearing “Cut!” we would stop and reset to the same starting point. Easy enough! We did this over and over again — and then it began to drizzle. Our fake dialogue took a turn: “I’m so cold. … I’m starving. … How much longer is it going to take to get this shot?”

I never got closer than 20 yards to Cusack, but I did receive a grandfatherly nod from director Stephen Frears as I drank hot chocolate from the craft services cart, and my inner film geek freaked out. Seeing the director of Dangerous Liaisons at work made standing in the rain all night totally worth it.

When High Fidelity came out, I went to the theater on opening weekend, keeping a sharp eye out for my scene. I spotted a few of my classmates from Columbia who’d also worked as extras, slinging back beers in the scene at Lounge Ax. But I didn’t see me. It was my first time ending up on the cutting room floor. It wouldn’t be my last.

Not long after, I got hired onto Steven Soderbergh’s Ocean’s Eleven remake. The shoot fell over a weekend, so I didn’t need to miss any classes. My call time was an aggressive 3 a.m. on what was one of the coldest days that year. The holding area was in a hotel conference center packed with extras, all of us lugging an array of parkas, knit hats, and scarves to run by wardrobe.

For nine hours, I rode the Brown Line through the Loop, playing a commuter. Spending that much time on the CTA is no one’s idea of a fun Saturday, but I didn’t mind, because I got to share the train with George Clooney and Matt Damon (and 20 or so other extras). I might have strategically positioned myself near the door so that Matt Damon would bump into me each time he exited the train in the scene.

Those of us on board stayed toasty, but the crew on the platform had that familiar desperate-eyed look of being chilled to the bone, nose-hair icicles and all. At one point, George Clooney jokingly pleaded with Soderbergh to let him stay in the L car between takes, and we all cheered, “Yes! Let George stay with us!”

I beelined to the movie theater the night Ocean’s Eleven opened. Once again, I didn’t make the cut. But a few years later, when Christopher Nolan came to Chicago to film The Dark Knight, I was ready to try again.

This time, working as an extra was really like jury duty — because I played a juror. For two days, I sat in a courtroom at the Daley Center, its Illinois state seals and Chicago flags temporarily swapped out for City of Gotham insignias. With my (literal) front-row seat, I got to carefully watch the filming process. Nolan looked very English and proper on set in a tweed blazer, and his directing style was precise and meticulous. Each scene of dialogue was shot multiple times from various angles, and before long I had every word memorized. The actors, including Maggie Gyllenhaal, Aaron Eckhart, and Eric Roberts, were relaxed, poised, and spontaneous, offering up variations on their delivery. For me as an acting student, it was a lesson in staying present in the scene and keeping your performance as fresh on the 12th take as on the first.

When The Dark Knight arrived in theaters, my husband and I rushed to a showing. The film was fantastic: gritty, dark, inventive. But most importantly, I finally showed up on camera! During the scene in which Roberts’s mob boss character goes to trial, you can see me in the background, blurry but recognizable with my light green jacket and dark hair. When my dad saw the movie, he congratulated me on getting more screen time than him.

I decided to retire from extra work after that: It felt like going out on top. But I unretired, Michael Jordan–style, when I heard that an adaptation of the young adult novel Divergent was filming in Chicago. I’d read the sci-fi series, and I thought my years of playing roller derby and my collection of tattoos would make me a good fit as a member of Dauntless, a faction of daredevils who help save the dystopian world.

After sending in my headshot, I received an email to come in for a wardrobe fitting. This was a step up: Instead of wearing my own clothes, I’d be dressed as a character in an alternate universe. I traveled to the Cinespace studios in North Lawndale to try on a stack of moto pants and jackets and tall boots. When I struggled to zip the boots over my calves, the woman from wardrobe shrugged and said, “If they don’t fit, I’ll cut the tops off.” It was a subtle reminder that despite the costume fitting, I’d still just be background.

I spent three long, hot days on the Divergent set in early July, not an especially pleasant time to be layered in fake black leather. The studio was transformed into the Dauntless compound, a deep pit with boulder walls, ropes, and fire dancers. Three hundred extras were on set to fill the giant space. We were filming a moment of rising action in which the heroine, Tris, played by Shailene Woodley, sees her fellow faction members being injected with a mind-altering serum. By random luck, I had been one of the extras selected to play the injectors. An assistant handed us prop syringes and had us practice “injecting” each other in the neck. Then filming began, and the other extras formed lines in front of us, waiting for their fake shots. As the scene rolled, I noticed a crew member with a camera propped on his shoulder inching closer to me. The director, Neil Burger, started giving me direction: “You don’t care about these kids. To you, they’re cattle in line for slaughter.”

I could hardly believe it: I was being asked to act! I shifted my expression to reflect boredom and disgust, though my heart doing cartwheels in my chest felt the opposite. Once he got the shot, Burger waved the camera operator over to the next line. I had no idea if I had nailed it or not.

The eight months between filming and Divergent’s release were nerve-racking. By then, I knew better than to get my hopes up. My friends and I saw the movie together, taking up the middle section at Regal City North. As the injection scene crept closer, my heartbeat quickened. And then there I was: a full-on close-up of me, of my expression of repulsion as I injected serum into the neck of an unwitting victim. For three whole seconds, I was the focal point. My friends cheered. I had reached the pinnacle of my career as an extra, and while I didn’t receive anything special for my scene — no padded paycheck as a featured extra — I did become much cooler in the eyes of every middle schooler I knew. Finally, I had stepped out of the background and into focus — no matter what my tax forms might say.