Do You Know Where Actors Make The Most Money

In this video, I'm going to be sharing with you where actors make the most money. This will surprise you. And I also have a great bonus video for you, how to create a great resume even with little to no experience. Okay, let's get started. Hi, I'm Aaron Marcus, and welcome to the Acting and Modeling Quick Tips channel and the Actor Career Center. Get ready to take a lot of notes. I have a little cheat sheet here that I'm going to be referring to because I don't have all the numbers memorized in my brain. But what I want to share with you here is where do actors really make the most money. And so first, let me just tell you, I'm going to list a lot of different areas where actors do get paid. Some of these are probably jobs, or might be some jobs that you don't even know about, that you might have a great interest in. And the other thing is I'm going to be sharing with you very specific numbers of what, at least what union actors earn in different areas of the business. And then I will share with you very specifically where they make the most money. So look, everybody knows about film and TV, of course. And even though you will hear about actors who could be making millions, tens of millions of dollars on a feature film, some actors on television series, not as much anymore, but sometimes— and these were the exceptions to the rule— where they could make $1 million in an episode. I remember, and this is years ago when I was working on House of Cards, the 2 principals, Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright, they were getting $500,000 an episode. Still, that's not where actors make the most money. I can tell you that with the new union contract, and once again Numbers change all the time, so if you want to find out the specific numbers, you can always go to the union website to see if they have changed. But as of today, as I'm shooting this, actors will earn $1,083 for an 8-hour day. That's minimum of what they're going to earn. $2,741 if they have a 3-day contract, and a weekly contract is $3,756. Once again, that's the minimum. Depending on how well-known you are, depending on the agent that you're working with, the experience that you have, how much you are really bringing to the show, whether you're going to be bringing in a lot of viewers, of course those numbers will jump dramatically. But That is the minimum. Now, here's an area of the industry you might not be familiar with, and it's called— they're called industrial films. Industrial films are training films, and it could be anything from government jobs, maybe. And look, I've done hundreds of these things over the years, and I've done things like for the United States Navy. I was flown to Chicago or Chicago area. It's called Great Lakes. And did a video about how to repair diesel engines. Now, I don't know about anything about diesel engines, but I'm really good at reading a teleprompter, and I sounded like I knew what I was talking about. So for industrials, let me find— it's $617, once again, for an 8-hour day, or it's $1,122. If you are an on-camera narrator, that means you are standing in front of the camera, you are just reading off the prompter, you're not one of the actors in a scene. Crazy thing is when you're one of the actors in the scene and you're getting paid a lot less, you're doing a lot more work because you have to memorize a lot of stuff. You know, being an on-camera narrator, which is my favorite, you're reading off a prompter. Okay, so that's another area of the business. Let's see, there's even— there are things like, they're called role players and standardized patients. Really quickly, I don't want to spend a whole lot of time with that. By the way, I've got a great video on the channel. I will share the link with you in the description, and it's 23 incredible side hustle jobs for actors. And you'll read about— read about— you will watch and learn more about role-playing and standardized patient. Really quickly, standardized patient, actors get hired to help either med students or residents do a much better job of doing exams. It's nothing invasive, but you are given a history of what your disease is. is, and you will know everything about it. And you get, you know, you get an interview, you get examined by a resident. It's all improv. You have no idea what they're going to ask, but you have to respond depending on, you know, your disease, you know, what kind of side effects, what pills you're taking, you know, any kind of restrictions you have. Anyhow, watch the video and you'll learn more about that. That's not The area where actors make the most money. Oh, and by the way, role players, that could be anything from working with the CIA and you are a bad guy and you're being interrogated. That's a role player. Maybe it's for some kind of disaster situation that's taken place and you are an actor and you are I don't know, you got burned by something or there was an explosion, and they will have medics in there trying to figure out what's going on. Once again, you're an actor, you get paid for that. That's not where they make the most money. That's not where we make the most money. Recording audiobooks, that's not where you're going to get the most. Certainly there's theater. You're not going to make the most doing theater. Maybe it's doing voiceover work for radio spots. And I have a number for you. Let's see, for radio, it's $347 for a 90-minute session. You know, once again, these are minimums that the union has negotiated. Everything can be changed. And also, if it is a radio spot, you can get money, and I'm going to talk about this later, with residuals. If you're doing a TV voiceover, that's $588.90 for a 2-hour session. That's not where we make the most money. Let's see, you can do extra work. If you're doing extra work on a TV or film, you get $187. Once again, this is for union actors. And then if you go into overtime, 9th and 10th hour, you get time and a half. If you do 11th and 12th hour, you get double time. If you hit golden time, that's over 16 hours, you start getting a full day's pay per hour. That's not where you're going to make the most money. You can do extra work for a TV commercial. You will make some money there. That's $400— let me find the exact amount here— $427.30. Those are buyouts, meaning you work as the extra on the TV spot. And you get paid once and that's it. But that's pretty good for an 8-hour day. Here, drum roll, here is where actors, union actors at least, make the most money, and it's through TV commercials. This might surprise you. And look, I know some actors who don't do TV commercials. They feel it's beneath them. They feel like they've worked too hard with their training. They feel like they're really skilled actors. And that doing TV commercials is beneath them, and that's fine. Look, you, you should do whatever makes you happy, and that's really important. For me, I love doing TV commercials. Oh, and by the way, I mentioned residuals once, and let me just bring this one thing up to you. So if you are working, once again, a union job, a TV show or a feature film, You do get residuals if you are a principal, and that is really where the money is seen. And I'll just— I don't mind telling you. So I worked on A Man Called Otto, the Tom Hanks feature film. And because I— it gets complicated, but I worked 4 different days on this project. Doing some different things. One was doing a stunt, which meant I got a full day's pay just for the stunt. I also got paid for being an actor in the scene. I had to shoot a short scene. It was actually in my home where I was supposed to be a guy, the guy who fell and was saved by Tom Hanks. I went on to social media, and so I recorded and I shot everything in my home office, sent it to production, and they actually used it in the film. So I got paid another full day for that. But it's— and it was 2 days of filming, so I actually worked— I'm sorry, 2 days of filming for my scene. So it was actually 4 days, and I'm sure I made, you know, over— way over, you know, $10,000 just doing that. But the residuals— and I've gotten a number of checks— the last one I got It was close to $10,000. That's just residuals, and that's from it airing on Netflix, people who purchase it, and things like that. So really, you know, just looking at the number of what you get paid for the day, that can be very misleading. It's how popular the project is and, and how much you earned You know, from, from the actual work. That— and it gets so— the, the residual process is so complicated. But anyhow, the point is you can make some really good money in residuals. So here is where we make the most money. It's— it really is TV commercials. And I mentioned that I love doing TV commercials. And so for the day You will get $783.10 for an 8-hour day. Once again, that's nothing compared to what you can earn depending on where it's airing and how long it's airing. You will get residuals, and unfortunately, I've never seen anything close to this, but I know some actors who have made a quarter of a million dollars from one day's work. It ran nationally, actually for some it even ran internationally. It ran for years and years and years and years. And look, you could be in a Super Bowl commercial, which is really fun, you know, to be able to say you're in the TV commercial during the Super Bowl, which happened to me once. But if it doesn't air after that, you're not going to really see that much money. It's when it airs over and over and over and over and over again. That's where you can see the money. And once again, at least for union actors, that is where we see the most money made by actors. If you are doing non-union work, if you're a non-union actor doing a non-union TV spot, you get paid a session fee, but that's it. You do not get residuals. So working on union TV commercials, that can be incredibly lucrative. If you have had any experiences doing TV commercials, or if there are some other areas of the industry that I didn't mention— I'm sure I probably forgot some— where actors can make money, please share it. And I'm talking about acting types of jobs, please share it in the comments section or a description section, uh, section of the channel, so that way we can learn from you, and I will respond to everything that you write in there. If you haven't done this yet, don't forget, subscribe, click the notification bell so you always know when a new video has been uploaded. If you like it, please give it a thumbs up. That really is helpful. And share the link with your fellow actors so we can continue growing, uh, this great channel with actors who are helping each other. If you look up here, you will see the link for this video. It's how to create a great resume even with little to no experience. I'm Aaron Marcus, and I can't wait to talk with you again soon. See ya.