On the other hand, Warburtons did give us this, which was a lot of fun:
Direct Line, using his Winston Wolf “cleaner” persona. Mildly amusing.
The Ragnarok joke aside, I will note that in reality Tom Hanks didn’t do the voices for the Woody merchandise (toys, video games, etc) from the Toy Story films; his brother and fellow actor Jim Hanks did. Jim sounds enough like Tom to make it work, and needed the work more than Tom did. (And was undoubtedly a lot cheaper for the toy companies.)
Famously why Angela Lansbury cast so many old-school actors in Murder, She Wrote - they needed to have working credits to receive whatever actors’ benefits applied and might otherwise have lapsed.
As others have already mentioned, you are handily bypassing her TV work from the 1980’s, which made her well-known; everyone knew her face and name, years before the Bond gig. I did, and I have zero exposure to London theatre or obscure British cinema.
Wikipedia bio headlines these pre-Bond times of Dench: “1970s - 1980’s - Rise to prominence and established actress”.
If I’m not mistaken, the amount of money that actors get paid on a per-labor basis (for lack of a better term) is much higher from certain commercials/ads than from movies.
Robert Downey, for instance, was paid $12 million by the smartphone manufacturer HTC to make a few ads. The amount of time he had to spent to make those ads was probably really short, and easy, compared to the time and energy in acting in the lead of a full-length movie.
Even if you felt you personally didn’t need the extra million, you could always donate it to a charity. A million dollars in exchange for 2 days of your time? You could do volunteer work 5 days a week for the next 20 years and still not make the same impact that the donation would make.
Do actors normally get residuals from commercials? I have always assumed that they get a flat fee, and that commercials generally don’t have long enough shelf lives to make residuals an issue.
To the OP’s point. The title of this thread mentions “ultra-rich actors.” I don’t know about you, but in my book, “ultra-rich” starts at $1 billion. I’ve just Googled “world’s richest actors” and found the following actors at or near that mark:
Name
Net worth
Jami Gertz (because she married a billionaire)
$3 billion
Tyler Perry
$1 billion
Jerry Seinfeld
$1 billion
Shah Rukh Khan (Bollywood star)
$770 million
Tom Cruise
$600 million
Robert DeNiro
$500 million
This gets to the OP’s question. Is there a point above which actors/entertainers won’t sully themselves by doing ads? Have any of these really high-net-worth people, approaching or over $1 billion, done commercials?
Seinfeld did some for a credit card many years ago, probably when he was only a millionaire. When did DeNiro do the bread ad @BlankSlate mentioned, and how wealthy was he at that time?
The OP may be right, that ultra-rich actors don’t do ads, but we haven’t been defining “ultra-rich” high enough.
That million dollars is no longer in Lopez’s possession. Which demonstrates how ultra rich actors can go through a lot of money maintaining the lifestyle they want. The premise that a person reaches a certain level of wealth and can decide they have all of the money they will ever need for the rest of their life isn’t necessarily true. Many people just adjust their spending habits upwards as their income rises.
Billionaire Jerry Seinfeld did a few commercials for Acura recently. According to iSpot.tv, commercials with Seinfeld have aired 1500 times in the past 30 days.
Which is the important part. She spent the money, which keeps the economy ticking along. It’s when the rich just sit on their fortunes that we have problems. Wealth isn’t Bad. Generational Wealth is.
Not saying you’re wrong but, like jewelry at award shows, it may have been borrowed or the designer gave it for publicity. The valuation is whatever someone says, not actual. Designers would kill for getting their product in front of the public draped on some celebrity’s body.
Okay, but I don’t really see this as relevant to the topic. The issue is why a person who already has a huge amount of money would be motivated to seek more money.
