On “Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen” in August, Cate Blanchett was asked about her biggest salary. Cohen guessed it was for playing Galadriel.
“Are you kidding me? No, no one got paid anything to do that movie,” Blanchett responded.
Blanchett added she didn’t make a backend deal with the studio — something that would have guaranteed her a slice of the profits once the film was released.
“No, that was way before any of that, no, nothing. I wanted to work with the guy who made ‘Braindead,'” she said, referring to Peter Jackson. “I mean, I basically got free sandwiches, and I got to keep my ears. No, no one got paid anything!”
Mitchell said backend deals were common in Hollywood well before “The Lord of the Rings,” giving the example of Jack Nicholson taking a salary cut for the original “Batman,” but making an “absolute fortune” from a backend deal. Bruce Willis made a similar move with “The Sixth Sense,” as did Tom Hanks for “Forrest Gump.”
“The key difference is those are all singular, huge stars in a film where [the actors] already have a bankable quality and will already have an expectation of a certain salary,” he said.