Patti LuPone slams Actors' Equity Association

msn.com:

Patti LuPone has branded the Actors' Equity Association (AEA) the "worst union". The 73-year-old actress announced earlier this week that she is leaving the organisation and although she's been a member for five decades, the 'American Horror Story' star claimed they have no idea who she is.

She told People magazine: "They accepted my resignation and told me that if I ever wanted to rejoin, I'd have to be approved. "And it's the perfect reason I withdrew from Equity.

Fifty years to this year . . . I've been a card-carrying member of Equity, and they don't know who I am basically," LuPone continues. "They just said, 'Fine, but if you want to rejoin, we're going to have to approve you. ' " Patti insisted the union doesn't "support actors at all".

She added: "They're just not good. And I just didn't want to give them any more money. " The Tony Award-winning star - who infamously stopped a production of 'Gypsy' she was starring in in 2009 when an audience member was on their phone - quit the union after growing frustrated seeing her name "bandied about" in connection to a more recent incident that she had no connection to, which saw an audience member at 'Hadestown' reprimanded for using a captioning device.