# What do B-List movie actors do to get by? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [October 8, 2008, 2:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-b-list-movie-actors-do-to-get-by/466946 "2008-10-08T02:38:21Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![ChrisBooth12](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e95f7d/32.png) [@ChrisBooth12](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ChrisBooth12)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2008, 2:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-b-list-movie-actors-do-to-get-by/466946/1 "2008-10-08T02:38:21Z")
I mean people like [Danny Trejo](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001803/) or [James Cromwell](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000342/) have been in a fair share of movies but nothing to live off of right? Don’t B list movies actors do something else to make ends meet? ---
**Author:** ![bouv](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bc8723/32.png) [@bouv](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bouv)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2008, 3:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-b-list-movie-actors-do-to-get-by/466946/2 "2008-10-08T03:02:06Z")
Why would you assume it wouldn’t be enough to live off of?😕 ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2008, 3:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-b-list-movie-actors-do-to-get-by/466946/3 "2008-10-08T03:03:54Z")
James Cromwell has done an immense number of character roles. Just because he isn’t the lead in the movies he makes doesn’t mean that he doesn’t make much money. Cromwell makes at least several hundred thousand dollars a year, and he probably has made more than a million dollars in some years. It’s harder to tell with Danny Trejo since he’s been acting for a shorter time, but he probably also makes several hundred thousand dollars per year. ---
**Author:** ![Telemark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/telemark/32/372_2.png) [@Telemark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telemark)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2008, 3:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-b-list-movie-actors-do-to-get-by/466946/4 "2008-10-08T03:06:05Z")
You don’t think James Cromwell makes enough to live off from acting? I think you severely underestimate the income of actors in major features. This guy has been working steadily since 1974. ---
**Author:** ![Belowjob2.0](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Belowjob2.0](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Belowjob2.0)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2008, 3:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-b-list-movie-actors-do-to-get-by/466946/5 "2008-10-08T03:17:06Z")
In no particular order, voice over work for TV, feature film animation, as well as TV and radio commercials; theater work; teaching acting classes; small parts in films and TV; part time non show business jobs. Comedians can do corporate shows, dramatic actors can do industrial or training films. Many actors can survive off of the big paychecks from their good years, assuming savings and investment, together with residuals, they can do quite well after a few years on a top twenty TV show. Cromwell works regularly enough to make his living primarily as an actor. His IMDB resume is impressive, and he’s certainly done work that we’re not aware of. He probably gets theater work, and voice over work to fill the gaps. He may also teach, many experienced actors do. Less well known actors often work as extras. Since they’re in the Screen Actors Guild, they get the Union extra rate, about 120 bucks for 8 hours, time and a half for overtime. Stand ins (doubles for lighting setups who look similar to regular cast members) make approx ten per cent more. Working as union extras also maintains their SAG health insurance, which can be the most important issue for them. Actors also get residuals for films shown on TV, and reruns of TV episodes. For a series regular, or a small part in a hit film, this can turn out to be substantial money over time. There is also commercial work, though experienced actors may shy away from it because it damages their brand. Radio commercial voice over work may be preferable because the actor can’t be identified by his or her face. Actors will also try to start their own production companies, using their experience and connections to launch other people careers and material. There’s also real estate. A lot of actors own rental property, or buy and sell houses to more successful Hollywood types. ---
**Author:** ![vandal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/858c86/32.png) [@vandal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vandal)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2008, 3:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-b-list-movie-actors-do-to-get-by/466946/6 "2008-10-08T03:17:30Z")
Danny Trejo and James Cromwell are by no means ‘B’ List actors. They are almost always cast in major motion pictures. ---
**Author:** ![ChrisBooth12](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e95f7d/32.png) [@ChrisBooth12](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ChrisBooth12)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2008, 3:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-b-list-movie-actors-do-to-get-by/466946/7 "2008-10-08T03:28:06Z")
Cromwell was probably a bad choice I know he probably makes a lot. ---
**Author:** ![Markxxx](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5daacb/32.png) [@Markxxx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Markxxx)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2008, 3:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-b-list-movie-actors-do-to-get-by/466946/8 "2008-10-08T03:30:52Z")
Sean Astin wrote in his autobiography that before he made “Lord of the Rings” he was making about $250,000.00 a year as an actor/writer/producer and that he had bought a house in Encino for $650,000.00 So it seems you can be a working actor and get by OK. (He also says he got $250,000 for ALL THREE “Lord of the Rings” movie, not each one) ---
**Author:** ![HeyHomie](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/heyhomie/32/207_2.png) [@HeyHomie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HeyHomie)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2008, 3:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-b-list-movie-actors-do-to-get-by/466946/9 "2008-10-08T03:38:25Z")
ISTR reading an article in Time or a similar magazine about some apartment building destroyed by the Northridge earthquake. The building looked (in “before” shots) solidly lower-middle class to my eye, not unlike what I’d find here in Springfield housing people who worked third-shift, barely-above-minimum-wage jobs. Among the people made homeless by the destruction of the building were several cast members of a popular (at the time) TV show. They weren’t the leads, but they were definitely a major part of the show, and were household names. This article led me to believe one of two things (probably both): 1. What looks like a low-rent apartment building in Springfield isn’t necessarily low-rent in LA. 2. Non-lead actors in a TV series, even a popular one, don’t make much money. ---
**Author:** ![gladtobeblazed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/85f322/32.png) [@gladtobeblazed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gladtobeblazed)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2008, 3:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-b-list-movie-actors-do-to-get-by/466946/10 "2008-10-08T03:58:43Z")
> [@Markxxx](#): > > Sean Astin wrote in his autobiography that before he made “Lord of the Rings” he was making about $250,000.00 a year as an actor/writer/producer and that he had bought a house in Encino for $650,000.00 > > So it seems you can be a working actor and get by OK. (He also says he got $250,000 for ALL THREE “Lord of the Rings” movie, not each one) He only got a quarter million for working on LOTR? That’s terrible. ---
**Author:** ![Zoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/a4c791/32.png) [@Zoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zoe)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2008, 4:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-b-list-movie-actors-do-to-get-by/466946/11 "2008-10-08T04:01:52Z")
Not everyone requires a house or condo that looks like a showplace from the outside. ---
**Author:** ![friedo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/8edcca/32.png) [@friedo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/friedo)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2008, 4:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-b-list-movie-actors-do-to-get-by/466946/12 "2008-10-08T04:21:39Z")
> [@gladtobeblazed](#): > > He only got a quarter million for working on LOTR? That’s terrible. That’s probably just his salary for the job, not counting all the residuals he’ll get for years and years to come for the three movies. ---
**Author:** ![alice\_in\_wonderland](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alice_in_wonderland/32/176_2.png) [@alice\_in\_wonderland](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/alice_in_wonderland)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2008, 5:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-b-list-movie-actors-do-to-get-by/466946/13 "2008-10-08T05:15:35Z")
I was watching _Intervention_ a while back and one of the addicts was a woman with agoraphopia who’d been on the first 3 seasons of ER playing a minor part. She had a shopping addiction and at one point was worried about paying a bill or something, but then her $45,000 residual cheque arrived. She recieves 4 of them a year. That’s almost $200,000/year. I would think most people would be able to get by on that, assuming they didn’t have the super glam holywood lifestyle. ---
**Author:** ![madmonk28](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/madmonk28/32/20811_2.png) [@madmonk28](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madmonk28)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2008, 5:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-b-list-movie-actors-do-to-get-by/466946/14 "2008-10-08T05:36:45Z")
I have a friend who appeared in a couple of movies with bit parts, sitcoms, and tv commercials and he still gets residual checks that allow him to live at a certain level of slacker comfort. ---
**Author:** ![Prelude\_to\_Fascination](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/a183cd/32.png) [@Prelude\_to\_Fascination](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Prelude_to_Fascination)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2008, 1:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-b-list-movie-actors-do-to-get-by/466946/15 "2008-10-08T13:29:12Z")
> [@alice\_in\_wonderland](#): > > I was watching _Intervention_ a while back and one of the addicts was a woman with agoraphopia who’d been on the first 3 seasons of ER playing a minor part. > > She had a shopping addiction and at one point was worried about paying a bill or something, but then her $45,000 residual cheque arrived. She recieves 4 of them a year. That’s almost $200,000/year. I would think most people would be able to get by on that, assuming they didn’t have the super glam holywood lifestyle. Agreed. While $200,000/year isn’t the same as $20,000,000 for one movie, it’s a lot more than the average person in the US makes, and one can live quite comfortably on that amount. Plus what was said upthread re teaching, writing, stage plays, etc. When I read a bio of someone who doesn’t have a lot of recent movie credits, I think “stage work”. For instance, Gary Sandy played Andy Travis in WKRP in Cincinnati. According to imdb, he’s worked in TV/movies sporadically the last few years (1999, 2000, a couple of credits in 2001, nothing til 2004, which was the latest credit listed), but I know (no cite) he’s performed in a lot of plays over the years. He lives (lived at least) outside of Louisville Kentucky, and has been written up in newspapers over the years in the Louisville/Cincinnati/Indianapolis area from time to time, and they always mentioned a play he was in. Whether Sandy is a ‘B’, ‘D’, or ‘Z’ actor is left to the definition of the reader. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2008, 1:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-b-list-movie-actors-do-to-get-by/466946/16 "2008-10-08T13:37:50Z")
> [@HeyHomie](#): > > ISTR reading an article in Time or a similar magazine about some apartment building destroyed by the Northridge earthquake. The building looked (in “before” shots) solidly lower-middle class to my eye, not unlike what I’d find here in Springfield housing people who worked third-shift, barely-above-minimum-wage jobs. > > Among the people made homeless by the destruction of the building were several cast members of a popular (at the time) TV show. They weren’t the leads, but they were definitely a major part of the show, and were household names. > > This article led me to believe one of two things (probably both): > > 1. What looks like a low-rent apartment building in Springfield isn’t necessarily low-rent in LA. > 2. Non-lead actors in a TV series, even a popular one, don’t make much money. You mean, housing prices are different in LA than in Springfield? I’m shocked! 😉 But you raise a good point: to be a regularly-working actor, you probably have to live somewhere expensive, like New York or LA; so what sounds like a good income might not be quite so good. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2008, 2:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-b-list-movie-actors-do-to-get-by/466946/17 "2008-10-08T14:08:22Z")
> [@Belowjob2.0](#): > > …There’s also real estate. A lot of actors own rental property, or buy and sell houses to more successful Hollywood types. Bill Cobbs, an older black character actor you’d recognize the minute you saw him even if you didn’t know his name (he was one of the three older laid-off guards in _Night at the Museum_, and Whitney Houston’s manager in _The Bodyguard_) owns some real estate in Cleveland, his hometown. He once appeared before me as the plaintiff in a small claims case for back rent. Nice guy. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2008, 2:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-b-list-movie-actors-do-to-get-by/466946/18 "2008-10-08T14:21:16Z")
> [@friedo](#): > > That’s probably just his salary for the job, not counting all the residuals he’ll get for years and years to come for the three movies. [Article on residuals.](http://www.forbes.com/global/2004/0607/028_print.html) > [@](#): > > Richard Herd, 71, has made a nice living as a character actor in some 400 movies and TV shows. Most viewers would recognize him from Seinfeld as Mr. Wilhelm, George Costanza’s blustery boss at the New York Yankees. For every Seinfeld rerun, he gets a check. One 1980 episode of M_A_S\*H broadcast on one local station is worth $39. “When I had a tough time in my middle years, the residuals were so good I could live off them for six or seven months,” says Herd. “That’s how I got the kids through college.” > > But the residual system also enriches a bizarre range of lesser lights–like Gary Schwartz, an actor who rarely appears on screen. Schwartz is a “looper,” an elite class of voice-over actors who provide the background conversations for crowd and street scenes as well as the grunts and oomphs for fight scenes. He even speaks in Klingon on Star Trek. > > Schwartz earned $278 to $618 a day under standard union wages, and he figures each looping job paid him an average of $2,500 in residuals as well. He has worked on some 600 commercials, TV shows and movies, including Batman Returns, The Prince of Tides, The Fugitive, Jurassic Park, The Scorpion King and Planet of the Apes. “I’m still living on residual money,” he says, enjoying the view from his porch overlooking the Snoqualmie River near Seattle. “The more you loop, the more you bank.” > > Even puppeteers who never appear on screen still get residuals, a bizarre inequity protested by animal trainers who perform a similar function but with independent-minded creatures. “SAG is not coming to our rescue, nor is the Teamsters union,” laments Carol Lille of Goin’ Ape animal trainers, who provided the snowboarding chimp for Disney’s MXP: Most Xtreme Primate. > > But the residuals monkey business possibly reaches its extreme in the case of Shelley Michelle. A classically trained ballet dancer who earned an acting scholarship to the University of Southern California, Michelle has since turned her buxom assets into a full-time career as a nude body-double to actresses such as Kim Basinger, Barbra Streisand, Sandra Bullock and Catherine Oxenberg. After her breakout performance as Julia Roberts’ body double in 1990’s Pretty Woman (that’s her torso in the black panties in the opening scenes), for which she received only $750 a week during filming, Michelle petitioned SAGto demand residuals beginning in 1995. Now she receives residual checks ranging from $70 to $250 every time a movie is shown in which she worked for just one day doffing her clothes. For 1993’s Rising Sun, starring Sean Connery and Wesley Snipes–she plays a tap dancer who lets the bad guys eat sushi off her nude body–she says she’s received $15,000 in residuals so far. > > “You can make a decent living out of it,” she boasts. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2008, 5:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-b-list-movie-actors-do-to-get-by/466946/19 "2008-10-08T17:25:25Z")
Thank you for the Forbes article; that was interesting. So Richard Herd gets $39 every time a particular episode of M_A_S\*H is broadcast on a local station. That may not seem like a lot, but it’s not bad, and presumably the bigger stars get bigger residual checks. I wonder what’s the cost for broadcasting that episode? ---
**Author:** ![Rhythmdvl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/85f322/32.png) [@Rhythmdvl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rhythmdvl)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2008, 5:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-b-list-movie-actors-do-to-get-by/466946/20 "2008-10-08T17:37:57Z")
Does anyone know that site that profiled B/character actors? Those faces you see everywhere but don’t know their name? [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-b-list-movie-actors-do-to-get-by/466946.md?page=2)