Look into how much it costs to purchase, fuel up, pay a crew and perform maintenance on a private jet. The OP’s example of 50 million would be a limitless fortune for my lifestyle, but if I aspired to jet around the world anytime I had the whim then earning an extra million here and there would start to feel necessary.
I agree. In my first post in this thread, I said the reason somebody would want to earn a million dollars is because they plan to spend a million dollars.
They were, and I thought I read at the time (likely on this board) that he was doing them to avoid bankruptcy (divorce-related?). Which clearly doesn’t tally with the net worth of $500m posted upthread here.
There is an unstated assumption here that the actor is being paid in money and this is the main motivator… Must this always be the case? Maybe Shatner famously being offered a portion of the Priceline business is not so different. But rich people also have lives - friends and employees they like, children they wish to succeed, spouses to satisfy, opportunities they can benefit from, tickets that are hard to get even for successful people. Maybe some even like the product or the people or companies shilling them.
They sure do. It’s in the SAG contract. And commercials run a lot more often than shows do. It’s how actors make decent money, since union scale for a day or two of shooting doesn’t amount to much.
You may say, after seeing a commercial for the twentieth time, enough. We say - “those actors are making a fortune.”
The residual formula is very complex, depending on market size and with a sliding scale depending on how often the commercial has been run.
My daughter’s first gig was for Hess Toy Trucks, which are put on sale at Hess gas stations on Thanksgiving and sell out by the end of the weekend. Her commercial got aired a few times, but it is an unpopular gig because many years they get run maybe once.
Thanks, that all makes sense.
But does it apply to the big-name celebrities we’re talking about here? Even though they are probably SAG members, I can imagine a million-dollar contract dispenses with the need for a $0.53 residual every time the ad runs.
The union rules just set a minimum. The agent and the production company negotiate the terms for a name actor, and it could set the residuals at much higher than union scale. I’ve never been in the position to observe such a negotiation, alas.
Really kind of depends on what level of “big name celebrity” you are talking about - I remember reading that Dean Winters made far more from playing “Mayhem” in the Allstate commercials than he did from “Oz” ," Rescue Me" and " Law and Order SVU" combined.
@Voyager might know better than I - but my son did a couple of commercials and he didn’t get the $0.53 per showing type of residual. Instead, he got a larger payment periodically (I think for each 13 weeks) for each market , delivery method ( cable, website , broadcast TV) so that every so many weeks while the commercial was running six or seven checks showed up.
We got one check through her manager, but the components were very complicated. And this was before streaming. That’s one of the best things SAG does - figure all this stuff out. She was an extra and an episode of a soap opera once and got a check for when it showed in Italy - six cents.
Anything is negotiable, but how well you do depends on the clout of the actor and the skill of the agent.
I had one of those! It was awesome. I don’t know what they’re like these days, but the one I had was an incredibly well-made toy truck with working lights.
(Sorry - I digress.)
I’m not going to lie, when he got into the truck on the wrong side I chuckled.
I can’t believe there were many people who didn’t know who Alec Guinness was until he made Star Wars. If nothing else his Ealing comedies made him a solid mid level “name.”
Also, The Bridge on the River Kwai was a big movie in the 1960s.
When I saw Star Wars I thought Peter Cushing was the big name, although I did know Guinness from Kwai and The Lady Killers. Cushing was a regular on 11pm creature features.
My nephew was in a commercial for Lee jeans (I think…it was something other than Levi’s). This was maybe twenty years ago when he was seven years old. It’s a bunch of dudes running around a lake carrying a canoe and fishing equipment and doing vaguely camping looking things. He was supposed to be in more of it but there is just a very quick shot of him at the end holding fish that he supposedly just caught.
Every few years they air it again during football season and he gets a several hundred dollars.
He’s an attorney now, not an actor.
Speaking of Star Wars…
Customer in car:
“This guy sounds like a real joker.”
How the mighty have fallen …
Is the commercial viewable online?
That’s interesting, that he still gets paid for his time and 1.5 seconds of fame.
I tried to find it and I couldn’t. I’m sure that my sister has a video tape of it somewhere. He usually gets notice of it when it’s going to start airing again.
He also had a brief scene with one spoken line and a terrible made for tv xmas movie with Stacy Keach and Shelly Long.