Admit it, you assume all actors are rich.
That being in movies or on TV means they’re living in mansions, plural, and flying on private jets. Or, at the very least, they are not worrying about money.
And, to be fair, there are some extraordinarily wealthy celebrities out there, whether because they get paid $20 million to be in a movie or are stars of TV’s biggest sitcom. Or, instead of relying solely on their day jobs, perhaps they have invested well or sold a liquor company for a billion dollars.
More often than not, though, artists—even the ubiquitous ones—are just trying to make a living and enjoy the fruits of their labor.
“It’s like three grand an episode,” Pete Davidson told New York of his early Saturday Night Live salary, when former cast members were asked how they spent their first paychecks. “So I think I got dinner.” Jason Sudeikis could sympathize, noting, “I think New York rent was probably the biggest purchase I made after writing on SNL the first year.”
Jennifer Lawrence
Oscar winner Jennifer Lawrence was paid $25 million to star in Adam McKay’s ensemble disaster comedy Don’t Look Up. But her costar and fellow Oscar winner Leonardo DiCaprio got $30 million.
“Look, Leo brings in more box office than I do,” Lawrence told Vanity Fair for its’ December 2020/January 2021 issue. “I’m extremely fortunate and happy with my deal. But in other situations, what I have seen—and I’m sure other women in the workforce have seen as well—is that it’s extremely uncomfortable to inquire about equal pay. And if you do question something that appears unequal, you’re told it’s not gender disparity but they can’t tell you what exactly it is.”
Her sanguine attitude was hard-fought: When the disparity between Lawrence’s compensation and that of her male costars for 2013’s American Hustle was revealed in the 2014 Sony email hack, it prompted an industry-wide conversation about the gender pay gap in Hollywood.
“I’m so fortunate to have my job. My problem is not money,” Lawrence told the U.K.’s Channel 4 News in 2017. “I wasn’t upset that I only got this many millions for a movie. That’s ridiculous. I was angry about the unfairness and inequality.”
Jonah Hill
Less comparable to DiCaprio’s salary: The $60,000 “before commissions and taxes” that Jonah Hill was paid for 2013’s The Wolf of Wall Street, while the titular wolf made $10 million.
“They gave me the lowest amount of money possible,” Hill recalled on The Howard Stern Show in 2014. But it was the chance to appear in a Martin Scorsese movie, so the Moneyball alum wanted to get the deal done before anyone could change their mind.
“I would sell my house and give him all my money to work for [Scorsese],” explained Hill, who earned his second Best Supporting Actor nomination for his turn as a squirrelly substance-abusing stockbroker. “This isn’t what you make money for. You do 22 Jump Street or you do other things, and you can pay your rent. 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.”
Oprah Winfrey
Oprah Winfrey happily accepted only a little bit of green to star in 1985’s The Color Purple.
“They were only offering $35,000 to be in this film, and it is the best $35,000 I ever earned,” the billionaire media mogul told Essence in 2023. “It changed everything and taught me so much.”
Jennifer Lopez
When she scored the role of late Tejana singer Selena Quintanilla in the 1997 biopic Selena, Jennifer Lopez became the first Latina actress to earn $1 million for a film.
“I was too young and didn’t know what the hell was going on,” Lopez told Variety in 2019, reflecting on her breakout movie. “It was great they offered me a million dollars. I feel like everyone was making a statement.”
And it paved the way for her to make hundreds of millions more, though sometimes her participation doesn’t cost a thing.
“I do things because I love them,” Lopez explained to GQ in 2019. “I didn’t get paid a whole bunch of money for Hustlers. I did it for free and produced it. I bank on myself, you know? Like Jenny From the Block—I do what I love.”
Adrien Brody
Adrien Brody didn’t do The Brutalist for the money. Rather, he took on the role of a Hungarian architect suffering for his art in post-WWII America for $250,000 and won his second Oscar for Best Actor.
“I need a studio movie now, because I’ve poured it all into this,” Brody quipped to Variety, referring to the “barn that looks like a castle” he’s renovating in upstate New York.
Pete Davidson
“Do you guys know what they pay us?” Pete Davidson cracked to New York magazine when asked ahead of Saturday Night Live‘s 50th anniversary special how he spent his money when he was first hired at the age of 20 in 2014. “It’s like three grand an episode, so I think I got dinner.”
Interestingly, the salaries have remained proportional for SNL newcomers, with season one stars John Belushi, Jane Curtin, Gilda Radner, Dan Aykroyd and Chevy Chase reportedly earning $750 an episode back in 1975. Which was roughly equivalent to $3,300 in 2014, according to the Consumer Price Index Inflation calculator. (Though the $750 of 1975 is $4,428 in 2025.)
Kenan Thompson
While Kenan Thompson makes a lot more than $3,000 per episode of SNL now that he’s in his record 22nd season, the former Nickelodeon star had to start somewhere.
“That first commercial when they paid me, it was $800,” the All That alum revealed in Demi Lovato‘s 2024 documentary Child Star. “I was 12 so that may as well have been a million dollars.”
Lauren Graham
It turns out Gilmore Girls’ status as a beloved rewatchable classic is literally priceless.
“There really are no residuals on Netflix,” Lauren Graham, who played Lorelai Gilmore for seven seasons and then reprised the role for 2016’s Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life, said on Jimmy Kimmel Live in March 2025. “But I’ve been paid in love and appreciation.”
Tommy Dorfman
Feeling not so appreciated, Tommy Dorfman got specific about her 13 Reasons Why paycheck during the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike—which was prompted in part (as was the WGA strike) by streamers like Netflix not making it a practice to pay additional compensation to cast and crew once a show had become a big hit.
“my earnings for the entire first season of 13 reasons why were $29,953.24 prior to agency and manager fees (20%) and taxes,” Dorfman wrote on Threads July 24. “8 episodes over six months.” She continued, “i did all of the promo and had KEY ART for this show, flew round trip from NYC to SF to shoot for every episode, was kept for days without pay/working. i barely qualified for insurance.”
And, Dorfman added, “within the first 28 days of release, the show’s season 1 garnered a total of 476 million view hours. this is why we strike.”
Dax Shepard
Without naming names or numbers, Dax Shepard told fellow Parenthood alum Lauren Graham when she appeared on his podcast that he knew he made “among the lowest of all the actors” on their NBC drama, which ran for six seasons.
But, the Armchair Expert host stressed that he did not mind.
“Every job I had ever had in my life prior to Parenthood, I made a point to find out what everyone was making,” he said. “I’d always figure it out—either a conversation where I get it out of them or I backchannel through an agent.”
So he made a point to purposely not seek out such info about his Parenthood family, which helped with enjoying the experience even when he did get an inkling of where he was on the pay pyramid.
George Clooney
“I got a dollar for writing the script,” George Clooney told the Los Angeles Times in 2005 about the financial strings he pulled to get his film Good Night, and Good Luck made. “I had to endorse my check for directing and turn in my acting salary. [Actor, cowriter and coproducer Grant Heslov] and I each made a buck for doing it.”
His labor of love about CBS News journalist Edward R. Murrow speaking truth to power in the 1950s had legs, though: Making his Broadway debut, Clooney is playing Murrow in a stage adaptation of the film. And with the play having grossed a Broadway record (for a nonmusical) $3.3 million during a preview week before it officially opened April 3, he’s making a lot more than $1.
Christian Bale
For his chilling turn as Patrick Bateman in 2000’s American Psycho, Christian Bale was paid “the absolute minimum they were legally allowed to pay me” because no one in the production really wanted to hire him except director Mary Harron, the Welsh actor told GQ in 2022.
He made so little, Bale shared, that he remembered “sitting in the makeup trailer and the makeup artists were laughing at me because I was getting paid less than any of them.”
Jon Heder
His uncle may have been Rico, but Jon Heder confirmed in 2010 that he was “initially” only paid $1,000 for Napoleon Dynamite.
After the irreverent comedy became a sleeper hit, he was able to renegotiate for a piece of the profits, telling the New Zealand Herald, “They went a little bit higher.”
Djimon Hounsou
Djimon Hounsou said he’s “definitely underpaid” in Hollywood despite his prestigious list of credits, including Amistad and Blood Diamond.
“I’ve been in this business and making films now over two decades,” the Beninese actor told CNN’s Larry Madowo in January 2025. “And still—with two Oscar nominations and been in many big blockbuster films—and yet I’m still struggling financially to make a living.”
Rebel Wilson
Rebel Wilson detailed in her 2024 memoir Rebel Rising that she was paid $3,500 to do Bridesmaids, “a fee that I then had to pay directly to the Screen Actors Guild to join the union. So really, I got paid nothing.”
Still, she wrote, the experience was “everything!”
And the Australian actress’ star rose ever a-ca higher, with her fee going from the SAG minimum scale of $65,000 for 2012’s Pitch Perfect to $10 million for 2017’s Pitch Perfect 3. Wilson wrote that she raked in $20 million total for the threequel, Isn’t It Romantic and The Hustle, though—reality alert—she “lost almost 50 percent to taxes, 10 percent to agents and 5 percent” to her lawyer. But even after those obligations and paying her publicist, business manager and assistant, Wilson “netted what to me was an absolute fortune.”
Ellen Pompeo
In late 2017, Ellen Pompeo negotiated a new Grey’s Anatomy contract for $575,000 per episode, a seven-figure signing bonus and two full backend equity points worth an estimated $6 million to $7 million.
“I’m 48 now, so I’ve finally gotten to the place where I’m OK asking for what I deserve, which is something that comes only with age,” Pompeo told The Hollywood Reporter in 2018. “Because I’m not the most ‘relevant’ actress out there. I know that’s the industry perception because I’ve been this character for 14 years. But the truth is, anybody can be good on a show season one and two. Can you be good 14 years later? Now, that’s a f–kin’ skill.”
Reflecting more recently on how she always made less than costar Patrick Dempsey, even though she was the Grey in question, Pompeo said she didn’t begrudge him his money.
But, she said on a March 2025 episode of Call Her Daddy, “Just being that I was the namesake of the show, I deserved the same and that was harder to get. I wasn’t salty about him getting what he got. I was salty that they didn’t value me as much as they valued him and they never will.”
Jamie Lee Curtis
Jamie Lee Curtis recalled getting paid $2,000 a week—so $8,000 in total—for 1978’s Halloween, her movie debut. “I mean,” she told Rotten Tomatoes in 2018, “nobody got paid, anything.”
Yet while the scream queen earned four figures, director John Carpenter’s friend Nick Castle felt like a king making $25 per day to share the role of Michael Myers. (It’s Anthony Moran whose face you see when the killer’s mask comes off for a freaky second, and editor Tommy Lee Wallace also logged screentime as Michael.)
“That was a lot at the time!” Castle, who attended film school at USC with Carpenter, told Vanity Fair in 2018. “You have to remember: My interest in doing the film was being on set, so I could demystify the experience of filmmaking and directing. I expected to hang around the set for no money. But hey, $25 per day, and all I had to do was wear a rubber mask.”
Taraji P. Henson
Taraji P. Henson earned a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination for 2008’s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, but years later she was still fired up by the $150,000 she accepted to be in the movie—after producers rejected the $500,000 quote she brought to the table.
As for the film’s leads Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett, “You don’t hear a lot of $20 million quotes anymore, but at this time that was happening,” Henson said on the Ladies First With Laura Brown podcast in 2021. “And rightfully so—I’m not saying they shouldn’t have paid Cate and Brad what they deserved.”
But, she continued, “I’m bringing a certain amount to the seat too and I felt like what I was asking at that time in my career was fair, was fair to the ticket sales that I would contribute to this big film. Wouldn’t do it.” Henson was “gutted” when they offered $100,000, she recalled. “When it was all said and done I got $150,000, but I had to swallow my pride, baby.”
Breaking it down, “I know people go, ‘$150,000, that’s a lot of money!’” Henson acknowledged. “I don’t ever want people to think that I’m ungrateful because that is not me.” But, she calculated, “Uncle Sam is going to take 50 percent of that, so now you’re left with, what? $75,000. Now before Uncle Sam takes the money, I have to pay my team before taxes, 30 percent. So once Uncle Sam takes his 75, then I got another 30 that’s coming off of that 75, so I may have made $40,000?”
Cate Blanchett
While Blanchett has made plenty of money over the years, it didn’t all come from playing royal elf Galadriel in The Lord of the Rings franchise, though it grossed $2.9 billion at the worldwide box office.
“Are you kidding me? No,” she retorted on Watch What Happens Live in August 2024 when Andy Cohen guessed LOTR was her biggest paycheck. “No one got paid anything to do that movie…I mean, I basically got free sandwiches, and I got to keep my ears.”
Orlando Bloom
They weren’t paid a precious amount, that is. Orlando Bloom, who played elven warrior Legolas, shared on The Howard Stern Show in 2023 that he made $175,000 for the whole trilogy.
Hopefully he also got to keep his ears.
