Cate Blanchett recently made some bold claims about what it was like filming the Lord of the Rings movies.
It’s hard to imagine that a name as big as Blanchett’s was once paid so little for her role in one of the biggest franchises in the world.
The actress, best known for her roles in Don’t Look Up, Tár, and Ocean’s 8, recently opened up about being paid crumbs (literally!) for her role in the Peter Jackson film trilogy.
On Tuesday night, the 55-year-old sat down with Andy Cohen during an episode of Watch What Happens Live where she disclosed exactly how much she was paid for Lord of the Rings after she was questioned about her biggest paycheck.
“I think it’s probably Lord of the Rings,” Cohen guessed to which Blanchett responded: “Are you kidding me? No, no one got paid anything to do that movie.”
When Cohen questioned whether she “got a piece of the backend,” Blanchett said: “No! That was way before any of that. No, nothing.
“I wanted to work with the guy who made Braindead,” she went on to explain. “I mean, I basically got free sandwiches, and I got to keep my [elf] ears.”
Cohen laughed before Blanchett doubled down, insinuating she was being serious.
“No, No I never got anything,” she said before going on to note that there are obvious pay disparities in Hollywood.
“Women don’t get paid much as you think they do,” she said and that was Cohen’s cue to move swiftly on.
The clip was later reported to YouTube where fans wondered where the hell all the money went because Lord of the Rings made a whopping $2.9 billion worldwide.
“Orlando Bloom said the same thing about LOTR. Those movies made BILLIONS! Where did all that money go to??” wrote one user while another took to X to add: “Orlando Bloom already said he only made $175k for all three movies, which is obscene considering their box office returns. Elijah Wood was the main star and only got $250k.”
This user, however, stated that everyone taking part must have got a cut.
“As a professional union actress myself, this is simply not true when high-profile actors say this. What they should have said is, ‘We didn’t get paid *A LOT* of money.’ Union rules state that everyone must get at least scale pay, which is over a thousand a day. No agent would allow an actor to work for free. She’s lying here. She may have been paid scale/small amount, but they all get paid. That’s literally the union rules.”
Others also questioned the legitimacy of her answer with this person commenting: “What she didn’t say is that they got shares – so if it made a profit – money on the back end ….?”
Blanchett has been open about the roles she chooses to take on, stating that the biggest influencer of what she views as her “most pivotal roles” depends on “the journey.”
“For me, I suppose, it’s the process rather than the outcome that’s important,” she told the Guardian in an interview last year.
“It’s all about the quality of conversation that I’ve been part of. I realized very quickly that the opportunities to spread one’s wings in this industry close down very quickly because often it is such a literal medium,” she continued. “And so I took little parts where I could keep experimenting, parts other people didn’t want to do.
“People would say, ‘You have got to stop playing small roles.’ And I’d say, ‘Well, why?’ I was just interested in the experimentation of it and not building a career,” she added. “I didn’t know what that was. I still don’t.”