With the prospect of an actors’ strike looming, New York City’s film industry is preparing for a serious summer downturn that already appears to have begun.

Because a nationwide strike could be called within the next several weeks, much of the city’s film and television production has ground to a halt, producers and union leaders said. Filmmakers are reluctant to begin costly shooting schedules when there is a chance they will be interrupted.

“Business could be quiet for a while,” Douglas Steiner, the president of Steiner Studios, one of the city’s largest production facilities, said.

Even as the city’s acting community gears up for a fight with the studios, however, its local union leaders are rebelling against their superiors in Hollywood, accusing them of dragging New York into an irrationally aggressive negotiating strategy.

The Hollywood leadership of the Screen Actors Guild is holding out for better pay and a bigger share of profits from the Internet. Screen Actors Guild officials in New York are claiming that the Hollywood negotiators are hijacking the union’s agenda.

The secretary of New York Screen Actors Guild division, Sue-Anne Morrow, said in an interview that New York is becoming the victim of a fight it doesn’t want.

“Unfortunately, the Hollywood members have the majority of votes on the national board,” Ms. Morrow said. “We were hamstrung in our efforts to protect and serve all performers nationwide.”

New York actors may be more willing to compromise because they tend to be “Jack of All Trades,” Ms. Morrow suggested, pursuing a hodgepodge of TV, theater, and film roles that are governed by multiple contracts.

The Screen Actors Guild Hollywood office did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

Despite the opposition among New York’s labor leaders, union members on the ground appeared to be prepared to strike. In half a dozen interviews conducted on the set of “When in Rome,” a movie filming near City Hall this week, cast members overwhelmingly supported the Screen Actors Guild’s tough stance.

“We’re negotiating for our future, not just for today,” a background actor on the set, Marti Vendetti, said.

If an official actors’ strike does occur, it may further stunt the growth of an industry that has ballooned in New York during the last several years. Filming activity in the city more than doubled between 2002 and 2006, contributing $5 billion to the economy annually and employing 100,000 people, according to the Mayor’s Office of Film, Theatre & Broadcasting. Production levels suffered a dip in 2007 following a nationwide screenwriters strike.

“The writers strike was a huge blow to film production in the city, and the actors strike would be worse,” City Council Member David Yassky, who spearheaded successful efforts to extend tax breaks to the film industry, said. “We’re on a good trajectory right now. Anything that disrupts a good trajectory will have long-term consequences.”