8 Actors Who Only Took A Role For The Paycheck Vs. 7 Who Took A Pay Cut To Play The Part

1.

PAYCHECK: Stephen Dillane, who starred as the humorless hopeful king Stannis Baratheon in Game of Thrones, told RadioTimes.com in 2016 that “money is the main thing I got out of [playing Stannis].”

He noted that it’s difficult for him to watch the series, since it’s so “brutal,” “hardcore,” and “too painful.” Despite these reservations, he clarified, “I don’t dismiss it at all. I think it’s fantastic. I think it’s an extraordinary thing. An amazing phenomenon.”

He added that he enjoyed “hanging out in Belfast with [Liam] Cunningham and Carice [van Houten] and the guys from Castle Black.”

2.

PAY CUT: In 2017, Variety reported that the original five stars of The Big Bang Theory all agreed to $100,000 per episode pay cuts in order to allow for higher salaries for their co-stars Mayim Bialik and Melissa Rauch, who both joined the show in its third season. By the show’s 10th season, Bialik and Rauch were making roughly $200,000 per episode, while the five original cast members were making $1 million.

The extra money from the pay cuts agreed to by Jim Parsons, Johnny Galecki, Kunal Nayyar, Kaley Cuoco, and Simon Helberg during contract negotiations for Seasons 11 and 12 amounted to $500,000, which was used to bring Bialik and Rauch closer to their co-stars’ salaries.

3.

PAYCHECK: Harrison Ford told The Independent in 2010 that he is “in it for the money.” By “it,” he presumably means his extremely successful, decades-long acting career.

Ford explained, “I mean that in the nicest possible way. This is my job. I don’t have another job. It’s my craft that I spent my whole life working on. I want to get paid to do it because, otherwise, I’m not being responsible, and I’m not valuing what I do for a living.”

The importance of assigning a fair monetary value to his work became apparent to Ford early on in his career. “A year and a half after I came out here, I was under contract for $150 a week,” he went on. “And the one thing I learned was that they had no respect for a person who was willing to work for them for $150 a week. So I always knew that what value I put on my own work was the value I would have.”

4.

PAY CUT: During an appearance on The Howard Stern Show, Jonah Hill revealed that he was only paid $60,000 for his performance in The Wolf of Wall Street, a salary that he described as “the lowest amount of money possible.” In comparison, his co-star Leonardo DiCaprio made approximately $10 million, meaning that Hill earned 0.006% of his salary.

Hill explained that the pay cut was a small price to pay for the opportunity to work with director Martin Scorsese. He said, “I would sell my house and give him all my money to work for him. … I would have done anything in the world. I would do it again in a second. This isn’t about money. You should do things that you care about.”

5.

PAYCHECK: When Morgan Freeman appeared on Today to promote Ted 2, an anchor said he wondered why the “great Morgan Freeman” was “talking to a teddy bear.” Freeman responded, “Earning a living.”

When asked if he enjoyed working in comedy as well as drama, Freeman said, “If it pays, I enjoy doing it. I don’t choose roles for the gravitas, I don’t know where that even came from. I just go for what I like, what I can see myself doing. So, if it’s funny, fine. And if it’s drama, fine.”

6.

PAY CUT: Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, the screenwriters behind Deadpool, revealed during an interview on AMC’s Geeking Out that star and producer Ryan Reynolds personally paid for them to be on set during filming, since the studio didn’t want to.

Since they worked on the project for six years with the “core creative team of us, Ryan, and the director Tim Miller,” Reynolds paying for their presence “out of his own pocket” must’ve seemed a necessary sacrifice to bring the anti-hero to life (and break every fourth wall available along the way).

7.

PAYCHECK: According to The Telegraph, Michael Caine said about playing Hoagie Newcombe in 1987’s Jaws: The Revenge, “I have never seen it, but by all accounts, it is terrible. However, I have seen the house that it built, and it is terrific.”

This is a side note, but I hope that this movie’s poster is where the “this time, it’s personal” trope originated.

8.

PAY CUT: Sienna Miller told Empire that when she starred in 21 Bridges with Chadwick Boseman, he donated part of his own salary to hers when the studio wasn’t willing to pay her what she wanted, and what she and Boseman both thought she deserved.

Miller recalled, “It was about the most astounding thing that I’ve experienced. That kind of thing just doesn’t happen. He said, ‘You’re getting paid what you deserve, and what you’re worth.’ It’s just unfathomable to imagine another man in that town behaving that graciously or respectfully.”

9.

PAYCHECK: According to ComicBookMovie.com, Glenn Close discussed her decision to appear in Guardians of the Galaxy as Nova Prime at the 18th Nantucket Film Festival in 2013, and chalked it up to getting the financial security she needed to accept roles in smaller, indie films.

Said Close, “I’m doing that [appearing in a Marvel movie] because it will then afford me to go do the other kind of movies that I really love, and hopefully, I will have a great time. It’ll be a new experience for me, but practically speaking, it will mean that I can do those smaller movies and it’ll be okay.”

10.

PAY CUT: In a 2005 Los Angeles Times profile, George Clooney said that for Good Night, and Good Luck, the black-and-white historical drama that he directed, co-wrote, and starred in, he “got a dollar for writing the script.”

“I had to endorse my check for directing and turn in my acting salary,” he explained of financing the film, which he did along with Todd Wagner, Mark Cuban, and Jeff Skoll. “Grant [co-writer, co-star, and producer Heslov] and I each made a buck for doing it.”

The actor called the film, which follows journalist Edward R. Murrow’s attempts to push back against McCarthyism, “a love letter to my old man,” an anchorman who Clooney said quit gigs when “he wasn’t willing to compromise.”

11.

PAYCHECK: When asked in a MovieWeb interview about why he decided to star in 2006’s Poseidon, Richard Dreyfuss answered, “Money! Big surprise, they offered, like, a lot of money, and I love money and didn’t have a lot, and I thought this is a good way of doing this.”

He elaborated, “I am basically retired; I don’t consider myself urgently connected to it, I don’t have to do it emotionally, I have to do it financially, and so my present criteria is far different than it was [earlier in my career].”

12.

PAY CUT: Keanu Reeves reportedly accepted a pay cut in the millions for The Devil’s Advocate to allow the production to afford to hire Al Pacino.

Apparently, he did the same thing for The Replacements, though this time, the extra cash went toward hiring Gene Hackman.

13.

PAYCHECK: Jerry Zucker, the director and co-writer of Airplane!, told The AV Club that after they offered the role of Roger Murdock to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar for $30,000, his agent got back to them and requested $35,000, since Abdul-Jabbar wanted to purchase a rug that cost exactly that much.

Zucker said, “It was an oriental rug — an art piece, not one to walk on, I don’t think — so our initial reaction was, ‘That’s got to be the best line we’ve ever heard from an agent.’ It was like, ‘Boy, this guy’s really creative!’ But then a couple of weeks later, there’s an article in Time with a picture of Kareem standing in front of the oriental rug that he’d bought for $35,000 after we’d paid him.”

14.

PAY CUT: According to the New York Times, Jack Black accepted a salary of $1 million — a significant reduction from his then-typical paycheck of $12 million — to ensure that Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny could get made. He split the money with his bandmate and co-star, Kyle Gass. Both stars also stood to receive 10% of gross revenue earned by the movie’s distributor.

When asked about the pay cut, Black responded, “Who cares how much money I make? What’s important is we got a movie about the D made, and we got to make it the way we wanted.”

15.

PAYCHECK: According to The Telegraph‘s account of the hellish production of 1981’s Inchon, a widely panned historical war drama, when star Laurence Olivier was asked why he accepted the leading role of General Douglas MacArthur, he responded, “Money, dear boy.”