I’ve been watching Lawrence of Arabia in Blu-ray and reading about it while I watch it. What a great movie, by the way.
Anyway, I read that Jose Ferrer required that he receive a very high salary for his appearance in the movie, which is really not a big appearance. Wikipedia says he got $25,000, more than Peter O’Toole and Omar Sharif combined.
What?
I know it was made in 1960-1962, but how could two major roles earn so little for such a long shoot? What did Peter O’Toole make for this movie?
I can’t seem to find it via googling. Is his salary widely known?
Lawrence of Arabia was O’Toole’s breakout role. I wouldn’t be surprised if he did the movie more for exposure than for money. If so, it turned out to be a shrewd decision.
In Hollywood, you get paid based on how well your last picture did. So actors rarely make much for their breakout role even if it’s their biggest hit.
As an example of how success begets pay raises, Robert Downey got $500,000 for Iron Man, $12,500,000 for Iron Man 2, and $50,000,000 apiece for The Avengers and Iron Man 3.
And Jose Ferrer’s previous role was the of director of Return to Peyton Place. If he was going to “downgrade” to being an actor, asking for $$$ isn’t that surprising.
I get that, but I would imagine he earned more than a percent of $25,000. It was something like a 14-16 month shoot, most of which he had to be in.
Right. I wasn’t asking about that. Good on him for asking for money. I was more interested in what Peter O’Toole(or maybe Omar Sharif) earned for the movie.
I’m no expert, but browsing around the internet, without bothering to double-check anything:
The budget for the film was 15 million dollars.
Median income in '62 was around $5k.
So, with that context, it seems reasonable that $25 would be the top amount for an actor, and that even a $10k salary for the film would be more than a decent amount of money for a relative n00b staring in a big-budget film.
According to IMDB trivia page Ferrer made 25K and a new Porsche for his role which was more than Sharif and O’toole made combined. According to IMDB Sharif made 8,000 pounds for his role. That leaves almost nothing for O’toole so I suspect something wrong with the conversion from pounds to dollars.
Taking those IMDB statements as possibly truthful, Ferrer got about $33,000 US. Sharif got $22,500 US using the value of the pound that year. That might leave 10K US for O’Toole.