I should further point out, in the case of my brother in law, that he also does stage work, and is one of the stars of Toronto’s Second City mainstage. That doesn’t pay as well as you’d think but it’s a nice sideline.
Most bit actors who are trying to make a living don’t just do movies and TV, but pick up stage work, modelling work, standup, even trade shows and whatnot. My BIL also does a lot of writing; the Second City cast writes their own material, plus actors are often working on stage productions they’re trying to get into festivals and such in the hopes they’ll pick up a few extra dollars and maybe get the show picked up. It’s very, very hard work, with long hours; when you aren’t performing you’re working on leads, auditioning, writing, taking classes (believe me, you CAN learn a lot of useful things from classes) and so forth.
I’d hope she was getting some Sabrina the Teenage Witch money, ABC Family plays it daily - as far as I’ve noticed it’s always been on somewhere since I was younger and watched it on TGIF.
In the original Taking of Pelham 123 (not the piece of shit remake) one of the train passengers was credited in the end credits simply as “homosexual.” My dad and I when we watched the movie could never figure our which one of the passengers it was supposed to be.
Must not be residuals, or not much of them. The quote from the end:
"Nobody wants to sit where I’m sitting and say, ‘Hey, this is the reality. I did two movies, six guest-star spots and I starred in a one-woman show, and I’m not making any money. **I’m on TV every day in every country in the world, **and I don’t make any money,’ " Broderick says.
(Bolding mine)… but the “every day” line, I suspect, is for Sabrina.
Residuals go down to a reasonably low level. I’m not sure how foreign ones work, but I don’t think they are very much. A soap my daughter was on for one episode ran in Italy and she got a check for something like twelve cents.
I wonder how much of her issue is the industry and how much it is that she isn’t hot any more so her agent can’t get the kind of money for a job she used to get. A lot of people would say $70K is pretty good money for not a whole bunch of work.
I remember the interview from which this article was written - there was some more detail in it.
In part, she said the lower wages are pressures from different sources. Two I remember are:
Reality TV: There’s simply fewer scripted shows being written and, therefore, fewer acting jobs. Demand for actors is down, number of actors hasn’t changed, therefore reduced wages for actors. Economics 101.
Big name stars in series. When Holly Hunter or Glenn Close or Jeff Goldblum are in your TV show, they demand a higher salary than a comparative non-movie actor. The pot of money for salaries is essentially the same as before so the remaining actors on the show get a share of a smaller remainder.
A former relative by marriage is a bit actor. Let’s see if I can get this right. He is the husband of the sister of my sister’s ex-husband. He’s a great guy who I see every year or two at a family event. He’s had guest spots on a bunch of TV dramas like E.R. and Law and Order. Most of the work he gets these days is voice acting for cartoons. He plays a bunch of characters on kids shows. He makes a modest living and I believe has a regular job to supplement the acting.
He came -><- this close to making it huge. I don’t want to give too many details but there was a role in a hugely successful movie in the 90’s that he didn’t get. It was down to him and another guy and the other guy got it. The other guy is now a household name. It was that role, for which he won an Academy Award, that launched the other guy’s career.
It’s certainly true that the average wage for actors is abysmally low. I think Actra says the average salary for all its members is something like $10/hr. If you make it to doing regular bit part and commercial work on TV, you’re already WAY ahead of the pack. Your average actor struggles around trying to get small parts in dinner theater and festivals, local non-network commercials, and trying ceaselessly to ‘break through’ to anything on network TV or in movies. And even then, they are hoping to hit the lottery with a regular series, or some commercials that wind up being aired constantly, or a spokesperson job for some company, etc.
As been given here, actors’ salaries are actually quite good when they work. Unlike most careers (except writing) there is a ton of variance and uncertainty in income, until there is some kind of investment income or residual income built up.
I’m not sure what a network commercial is. Commercial residuals are based on number of times shown and the markets the commercials are shown in, with bigger cities paying more and with a standard rate for basic cable. Commercials run all over.
BTW SAG is very good. Thanks to SAG, production companies pay up on time (not the case for non-union gigs) and they administer residuals, which are amazingly complex. They also supposedly administer work rules, but they are a lot weaker in New York than in LA. A lot of producers are very willing to violate work rules and pay the penalty, but the actors get more in that case, so everyone wins. Modeling is not unionized, and seems a total mess except for top talent.
A lot of it depends on what part of the country you live in. My sister-in-law is such an actress. She gets a lot of work in commercials and corporate training videos; not enough for her to quit her day job, but certainly enough that she and my brother are pretty comfortable. A big reason why she’s so consistently employed is that she doesn’t have much competition in Dallas, where she lives. IIRC, she still gets the union scale for union jobs, but the cost of living is so much lower relative to LA and NY. She’s also not an idiot with her money, which I think makes a difference.
Industrials (like training videos) don’t have residuals, so though they sometimes are pretty long, they don’t continue to pay.
Do the commercials she makes run outside of Dallas, or Texas? Or are they pretty local?
In New York if you are a SAG member you can’t take a non-union job without a waiver. Is SAG more lax down there?
A median salary of $23,470 sucks. And that range includes actors in off-broadway and regional theater (who earn between $479 and $800 per week), which are actually fairly premium jobs for a lot of actors. Steady paycheck and all.
In comparison, the median wage for a car salesman is about $30,000.
Acting is a lot like professional sports. Everyone has dreams of that 2 million dollar contract on a major league sports team, but the vast majority of professional athletes are playing skanky little fields and rinks in the minor leagues or the semi-pro teams, making little more than minimum wage. And those are the ones who ‘make it’. An even larger percentage try to make it for a long time and never get a shot. They don’t even show up in the statistics if they haven’t joined the union or registered with a professional association.
You might have missed the part that said when they are working. Actors who don’t work much clearly don’t make much money, but you can make a very good living with relatively few jobs.
Unless you have a major role, and a good record, acting in movies is not that great a way to make money. That you didn’t mention commercials shows you don’t understand the business very well. Commercials usually take a day or two to shoot, but since they run a lot more often than any show, they also make you more money. Legit work may be a bit more prestigious, but those in the business like commercial work a lot.
I’m not sure what you mean by network, but cable shows pay just as well, and though they don’t run in quite as many markets, maybe, and cable rates are lower, they also often get rerun a lot more. My daughter’s Nick shows were well over 30 when we lost count. She made damn good money for a twelve year old, especially considering her manager only called her for really good auditions, since we had to get to them from New Jersey.
I don’t count someone who isn’t professionally represented as being a professional actor. Agents can usually tell who has it - I almost was able to after sitting in sets and in casting directors’ waiting rooms with lots of professional children.
Now, stage acting does suck, in being hard to get and low paid. That’s my impression, I don’t know anything directly about it since no one who was doing commercials, industrials or TV we met was the slightest bit interested. One of my daughter’s friends did do theater on a cruise ship, and that was terrible. I suspect the wannabes pull the average down. I suspect writers’ salaries suck just as much, especially if you include people who are self-published.
In acting, prestige is often inversely proportional to the paycheck.