If a person makes “scale” - that is the actors’ union minimum wage for a day’s/week’s work - while finding consistent work - say, 240 days per year - would that be enough to make a decent living? By “decent living” I mean rent on a nice home, plenty of money to make the payments on a decent car, no worries about food, enough for some luxuries.
Just a wag, but the first PDF here indicates that the minimum daily rate for the LA zone was $148 a day and it seems to go up about 3 bucks a year, so let’s say 2015 is $155 a day - that get’s you $37,200 a year.
I’m betting in LA that doesn’t go very far.
You could do OK. According to this, the minimum day rate for studio film productions is $842. 240 days of that would net you a couple hundred grand. But that’s highly unrealistic even for the most accomplished day players. Also, the per-day rates are lower if you are hired for a full week or multiple weeks. And the rates are lower still for low-budget and very-low-budget pictures. (And for non-union films you’re basically working for free food. Maybe.)
Still, a real grinder with chops and professionalism could pull $100k a year as a day player. Most will make less than half that.
That’s for background actors (extras.)
The median actor’s wage in LA is roughly $57k according to Actor/Performer Salary in Los Angeles, CA | Salary.com
Rents and mortgages in LA are outrageous (900sq ft 1 bedroom apt well outside LA is $1200/month, minimum).
Even if you paid me enough to live in LA, you couldn’t pay me enough to live in LA. YMMV.
I kind of figured we weren’t talking about “talent”, but yeah the date goes up drastically.
I don’t see how any actor is going to be working 240 days/year.
Yeah–of course, it depends on the actor’s status, but I get the impression that it’s closer to 175 to 200 days a year, on average. And often actors have some kind of other work. TV work is pretty evenly paced, but film productions are sporadic and intense, with potentially long periods of time unemployed.
I was mostly thinking of actors on soaps - Mrs. Homie watches The Young and the Restless pretty dutifully, and by my estimation there are 20 characters who will appear on that show in a week’s worth of episodes. Since they’re making five hours of content per week, 52 weeks per year, with daytime ad rates, I figured their budgets must be stretched pretty thin, which got me to wondering what kind of money third-tier actors make. It has to be scale or close to it, yet they’re getting consistent work, so I was curious what kind of living they’re making.
When I left L.A. at the end of 2003, I was making about $45,000/year. I had a good one-bedroom apartment in L.A. north of Culver City (on Clarington at Palms), a new car, and could afford to rent a helicopter a couple of times a month.
I think my rent was around $800/month. They jacked it up to $1,200 after I moved out. Zillow says the rent estimate today is $1,695/month. If I had no bills and my income was $45,000/year, I might be able to live there today. Figure that salary is about $2,600/month after taxes and deductions (including 401k contribution). So there would be $900 left over for gasoline, electricity, natural gas, cable and Internet, mobile phone, car payments, food, household supplies, entertainment, etc.