In the end, only Hueter’s shoulder is visible in director Paul Feig’s 2016 reboot of the comedy classic. But she didn’t care. The experience of being on a movie set was so exciting, Hueter began to rethink her career choice. Eventually, she stopped teaching and took up acting, cobbling together enough work, mostly as an extra or stand-in, to make ends meet.

As Hollywood takes advantage of the state’s generous film tax credits, opportunities abound for locals interested in being extras. The work is unglamorous, involving long hours and a lot of sitting around, but Hueter and others hope even a blink-and-you-miss-it moment on screen might lead to bigger things.

And if not, that’s all right. They can make up to $400 a day and tell their friends they’re in the movie business.

Dale Appel, a Sharon resident in her 70s who works regularly as a background actor — she can be seen for an instant in “R.I.P.D.” and “Ted” — isn’t counting on being discovered.

“I’m supplementing Social Security with something that’s a lot more fun than being a greeter at Walmart,” said Appel. “At my age, I don’t expect to suddenly be the next Meryl Streep.”

Extras don’t have any lines, and their roles — “spectator,” “patron,” “passerby” — are so anonymous they often go unnoticed. But movies don’t work without them. Whether cheering at a football game, waiting in a doctor’s office, or crossing a city street, extras make scenes feel authentic.

“They help tell the story, but they don’t pull focus,” said casting director Kendall Cooper, who assembled all the background actors for “Little Women,” the Oscar-nominated period drama filmed in the Central Massachusetts town of Harvard in 2018. “If I do my job well, you won’t notice I did my job at all.”

Anyone can sign up with a casting agency. But getting a job as an extra depends on what’s needed in a particular movie. Sometimes the background roles are nondescript, like senior citizen or bartender, and sometimes they’re specific, like men with mustaches or, in the case of the Civil War-era “Little Women,” amputees.

There used to be scant work for local extras because so few projects filmed here. Even TV shows and movies set in Boston, notably “Cheers” and “Good Will Hunting,” were shot elsewhere. (The story of ”Good Will Hunting” takes place in and around Cambridge and South Boston, but the 1997 movie starring Matt Damon and Ben Affleck was filmed primarily in Toronto, where production costs were low.)

But now, Hollywood is hunkering down, enticed by the tax breaks approved by the Legislature in 2006 and made permanent last year. More than 30 major film and TV projects were shot in the Bay State last year, compared to just one or two a decade ago. While the stars of a movie are usually cast in New York or Los Angeles, smaller speaking roles and extras are locally sourced, often by Boston Casting owners Angela Peri and Lisa Lobel, who have an inventory of 100,000 actors to choose from.

When the producers of “CODA,” which filmed in Gloucester and Beverly in 2019, were looking for young people to play members of a high-school choir, Peri recommended Kayla Caulfield, whom she’d cast as an extra in “Central Intelligence.” She knew that Caulfield, who’s 25 and lives in Waltham, could sing.

Caulfield auditioned and got the part. She doesn’t have any lines in “CODA,” which won this year’s Oscar for best picture, but she does sing in a few scenes.

“I’m trying to take a break from extra work,” said Caulfield, who’s aiming for speaking roles now. “But if the opportunity arises for extra work, I’ll do it because, for me, work is work.”

As demand grows for more diverse Hollywood films, Peri and Lobel say they’re working to enlist extras of color. Before the pandemic, for example, Boston Casting held open calls in Mattapan and Dorchester to find Black extras, and handed out fliers to residents in Framingham’s burgeoning Brazilian community.

“There’s just much more representation in films now,” said Lobel.

Motivations vary among those who become extras.

“We have those people who think, ‘This is my moment. I’m going to be a big star,’ ” said Peri, “the realistic ones who just want to see what it’s like to be on a movie set, and we have a group who take it very seriously and treat it like a job that provides income.”

Jessica Rockwood is in the last group. As a kid growing up in Lynn, Rockwood watched countless reruns of “Charlie’s Angels,” sparking an interest in acting. At 18, she was an extra in “Little Black Book,” starring Brittany Murphy. It rained steadily during the overnight shoot in Boston, but Rockwood enjoyed every minute of it.

“You can see my Chevy Lumina in the movie — Brittany’s leaning up against it — but I didn’t make the cut,” she said. “I thought I was in the shot, but I guess I was behind a tree.”

In the 20 years since, Rockwood has made the cut many times. She’s “hillbilly hot tub girl” in “Father of the Year”; “female escort” in “Super Troopers 2″; and “stripper” in “Bleed for This,” the 2016 movie starring Miles Teller as Rhode Island boxer Vinny Pazienza.

“I got frustrated that I was getting the same kinds of parts,” Rockwood said. “But a friend of mine says, ‘Typecast is still cast,’ and I agree.”

Beyond screen time, there are other benefits. Rockwood, who worked as a flight attendant and dance instructor before devoting herself to acting, accumulated enough credits as a background actor to join the Screen Actors Guild. (You’re eligible to join the union after one day of principal work or three days of background work.) Membership isn’t free — there’s an initiation fee ($1,800) and annual dues ($230) — but the union provides health insurance.

“I have a few medical problems, so the insurance is really important,” Rockwood said. “It’s a big reason why some people do this.”

Is it possible that an extra could someday be an A-list movie star? Sure. Oscar winner Viola Davis was a background actor on “NYPD Blue”; a young Brad Pitt can be glimpsed in a party scene in “No Way Out”; and Renée Zellweger is “girl in blue truck” in Richard Linklater’s “Dazed and Confused.” But is it likely? No. And most extras know that.

“I never expected to be a star,” said Stew Replogle, a South Shore resident who was an extra in “Manchester by the Sea,” among other films. “But it’s like when you’re on the bench on a sports team. You know the coach could, eventually, turn and yell, ‘You!’ ”

Replogle experienced something of the sort recently while working on the upcoming Whitney Houston biopic “I Wanna Dance with Somebody,” which stars English actress Naomi Ackie and filmed in South Boston and at the new Marina Studios in Quincy.

Director Kasi Lemmons saw Replogle on set one day and tapped him to play the Beverly Hills police officer who tells Houston’s daughter her mother has died. Replogle was given a few lines, which increased his pay: Actors with at least one line of dialogue make $1,056 for an eight-hour day, while extras in the union are paid $187 a day, or twice that if filming runs long, or takes place at night or in bad weather.

“Those things happen,” Replogle said. “If you don’t show up, if you think you’re too good for background work, you might miss out on a speaking role.”

Although extras are paid for a full day, they often sit for hours before being summoned to the set. Some bide their time with a book — Hueter, who plays a waitress in “The Tender Bar,” read the memoir while waiting to shoot — while others stare at their phone, play cards, or hover around craft services, enjoying the free food.

“Some people get bored and kind of frustrated,” said Damian Vasquez Kuliunas, a Cambridge real-estate broker who recently appeared in a crowd scene at Gillette Stadium for “I Wanna Dance with Somebody. “If I could get some flow going, I’d like to do this all the time, so, during the downtime, I try to find people I jibe with and pick their brains.”

One thing extras don’t do is talk to the stars or director. That’s forbidden. (Other no-nos include bringing friends to the set or posting photos on social media.) Replogle recalled eating lunch at a table with Casey Affleck while shooting “Manchester by the Sea”: “He gave me one of those head nods like acknowledgment, but he didn’t say anything, so I didn’t.”

Sometimes the stars do talk to the extras. On the set of “Here Comes the Boom,” which filmed in Boston and Lowell in 2011, Appel, the retiree from Sharon, said she was approached by actor Henry Winkler.

“He asked me what would make someone want to be an extra in the middle of the night,” she said.

Background actors aren’t getting rich and, more often than not, they don’t even see themselves in the movie. Veteran extra Chuck Slavin was cast as a landscaper in “Sound of Metal,” which filmed in Ipswich and Rowley in 2018. Slavin wielded a leaf blower in the background of two scenes with the film’s star, Riz Ahmed, but when he saw the movie, he wasn’t in it.

“I think they just wanted someone to clean the set,” Slavin cracked.

Everyone has a story of disappointment. Years ago, Andrea Lyman was in the hair-and-makeup trailer preparing to shoot her first scene of “Waterfront” when someone walked in and announced that CBS had just canceled the show.

“I stay positive,” said Lyman, a Newton resident who appears, uncredited, in “The Polka King” and “American Hustle.” “Instead of what didn’t happen for me, I’m, like, what did happen?”

And sometimes extras can make a big impression. Kevin Fennessy, a longtime Boston actor and former casting director, has done a bit of everything on screen. Most recently, he had a small speaking part in the HBO Max series “Julia,” playing the owner of a bookstore.

But in the Oscar-winning film “Spotlight,” Fennessy’s role was negligible. At least he thought it was: In a four-person scene, he was the only one who didn’t speak. Then he bumped into actress Denée Benton, who was in town starring in the musical “Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812″ at the American Repertory Theater.

“I was walking into the theater, and she was walking out. She stopped me and said, ‘Oh my God, you’re the ‘Spotlight’ guy!’ ” Fennessy said. “A star performer recognizing an extra. It was so cool.”

Mark Shanahan can be reached at mark.shanahan@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @MarkAShanahan.