00:00Part of it was the money, actually.
00:01I didn't get paid very well for Lord of the Rings.
00:04Oh, so there was bitterness?
00:06No, no, not bitterness.
00:07Just like, oh, we have to sell our house now, what are you going to do?
00:10Oh, jeez.
00:11You had to sell your house?
00:12I had to sell my house afterwards.
00:13That was Sean Astin on The Jim and Sam Show back in 2017,
00:17explaining how he had to sell his home in the Hollywood Hills at the height of his fame.
00:22All because his Lord of the Rings paycheck wasn't so golden.
00:26Despite starring in a string of hit movies beforehand, like The Goonies,
00:30the former child actor says his L.O.T.R. contract earned him just $250,000,
00:35with no residuals, but a little bit of merch.
00:38Nearly a decade later, he's speaking out about the salary once again
00:42in a new interview with The Guardian, saying,
00:45There was a disconnect between the attention I was getting and how much money we had.
00:49It was not a lot of money.
00:50In fact, I had to sell my house because I negotiated such a small amount on the trilogy.
00:55Astin, who is now the president of the Screen Actors Guild,
00:58clarified he is now very comfortable financially, adding,
01:01I'm not asking anyone to feel sorry for me because of money.
01:05When asked if he'd negotiate better pay if he returns as Samwise the Hobbit in a future project,
01:10he declared,
01:11That's goddamn right.
01:13Astin's not alone in taking a tiny paycheck.
01:15In 2015, Frodo Baggins himself, Elijah Wood,
01:19divulged to Business Insider that the deal was a real gamble.
01:23Because we weren't making one movie and then renegotiating a contract for the next,
01:28it wasn't the sort of lucrative scenario that you could sort of rest easy for the rest of your life.
01:32The benefit of that was that we were also signing up for something that was going to be a part
01:36of our lives forever.
01:38And here's what Orlando Bloom, aka Legolas the Elf, told Howard Stern in 2019.
01:43On Lord of the Rings, you probably didn't even get to participate in the big,
01:47because they signed you when you were nobody.
01:49I got nothing, 175 grand.
01:50In 2024, Cate Blanchett also joked to Andy Cohen about just how paltry the pay was.
01:56What film that you've done has gave you the biggest paycheck?
01:59You go.
02:00I think it's probably Lord of the Rings.
02:03Are you kidding me?
02:04Oh, really?
02:05No, no one got paid anything to do that movie.
02:07But did you get a piece in the back end?
02:09No.
02:09What?
02:09That was way before any of that, you know, no, nothing.
02:14I wanted to work with the guy who made Braindead.
02:17I mean, I basically got free sandwiches.
02:19Well, moolah aside, the Lord of the Rings cast could be getting the band back together soon.
02:24Andy Serkis is currently directing the latest movie in the franchise, The Hunt for Gollum.
02:29And former CBS talk show host Stephen Colbert is co-writing Shadow of the Past.
