The Lord of the Rings trilogy is a phenomenon. Despite the popularity of the fantasy films, however, even lead actor Elijah Wood apparently didn’t get paid a king’s ransom for his role as Frodo.
The Lord of the Rings trilogy – The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers and The Return of the King – was shot by Peter Jackson in one go. The actors gave a year of their lives to the fantasy project, plus several months for re-shoots. But apparently they weren’t paid as much as some other stars at the time. Elijah Wood doesn’t care about his relatively low Middle-earth income.
Lord of the Rings salary: Elijah Wood can’t rest on his Lord of the Rings laurels
Elijah Wood is not the first Lord of the Rings star to be asked about his salary. Last summer, Cate Blanchett’s salary statement went viral, saying that “nobody got paid anything,” even though the trilogy took in nearly $3 billion worldwide.
Compared to Business Insider, the Frodo star now confirmed that even as a leading actor, like the other stars, he received “no massive salaries.”:
Because we didn’t make a movie and then negotiate a new contract for the next movie, it wasn’t the lucrative scenario on which you could rest for the rest of your life. […] But the advantage of it was that we were signing on for something that would be part of our lives forever.
So a big paycheck wasn’t as important to Elijah Wood as the unique Middle-earth experience on Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings set or a share of the box office takings, which in retrospect would have paid off enormously. Instead, we can now continue to see the star in action (instead of enjoying a potential acting pension), for example, most recently in the third season of the series Yellowjackets or the movie The Monkey.
Legolas actor Orlando Bloom also surprised with his Lord of the Rings salary: a year and a half ago, he revealed that he had received $175,000 for the three films. Samwise actor Sean Astin, on the other hand, received a salary of $250,000. According to The Things, Elijah Wood was initially offered $250,000, but in the end he pocketed a $1 million salary check for three films. However, this information is not confirmed and Wood himself remains silent about the specific amount.
Compared to other Hollywood salaries, such as the million-dollar Harry Potter stars, whose pay rose from film to film in the early 2000s, this is not much. Last year, the salaries of Hollywood’s top-earning actors ranged from $25 million to $88 million.
