Actor Sean Astin has said he negotiated such a small salary for playing Samwise Gamgee in Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy that he was forced to sell his house.
Astin played Sam in 2001's The Fellowship of the Ring, 2002's The Two Towers, and 2003's The Return of the King, which were filmed back-to-back.
Backing up previous comments from fellow The Lord of the Rings actors, Astin said there was a “disconnect” between the amount of attention he received for acting in the billion dollar movie franchise, and the money he got for doing so.
Last year, Frodo actor Elijah Wood, who Astin spent a great deal of screen time with as Sam, said that his salary for The Lord of the Rings movies was “not massive” and that appearing in the films was “a real gamble.”
“Because we weren’t making one movie and then renegotiating a contract for the next, it wasn’t the sort of lucrative scenario that you could sort of rest easy for the rest of your life,” Wood told Business Insider at the 2025 Texas Film Awards.
The actor also noted that the company who made the picture, New Line Cinema, took “a real gamble” by shooting all three films back to back — but that risk was only made possible by offering the cast “not massive salaries.”
That said, Wood made it clear that the salary, however small, was not the big draw of participating in the film. “The benefit of that was that we were also signing up for something that was going to be a part of our lives forever,” he explained.
In 2024, Cate Blanchett, who played the elf Galadriel in The Lord of the Rings, said on the Watch What Happens Live talk show that she “basically got free sandwiches” and “no one got paid anything.” Orlando Bloom, who played Legolas, said in 2019 that he had been paid $175,000 for all three films. "Nothing, nothing, nothing. I got nothing. 175 grand for three movies," he said at the time. "No listen, greatest gift of my life, are you kidding me? You'd do it again for half the money."
Now, in a new interview with The Guardian, Astin admitted he was “not prepared for that level of visibility and access,” following the success of The Lord of the Rings. “And there was a disconnect between the attention that I was getting and how much money we had. It was not a lot of money! In fact, I had to sell my house because I negotiated such a small amount on the trilogy.”
Astin has spoken about this before. In 2017, he told the Jim & Sam Show that he had bought a house with a $250,000-a-year mortgage before filming on The Lord of the Rings started, but he didn't make enough from the movie to afford it.
"I did the audition process and got offered Lord of the Rings, and it was an offer for $250,000 for a year and a half," he said. "And I was like, 'Wait a minute, my pen signed this contract, which obligated me to $250,000 a year, and I'm gonna sign this contract, which will make it so that I absolutely cannot satisfy that other thing.'"
"So it was $75,000 a movie. No residuals."
Astin added that by the time The Return of the King arrived in theaters in 2003, he was in a better financial position. “We agreed not to talk about it, but when it came time to do publicity for the third film, I was feeling a little bit better, is that a good way to get around that?" he said.
Clearly, since then Astin has done well enough, telling The Guardian he’s “very comfortable financially now.” Indeed, there is talk of him reprising the role of Sam in the new film co-written by Tolkien superfan Stephen Colbert. Astin confirmed he’d spoken to Colbert about it, he’s up for it, and he’d like to think he’d be better paid this time.
Photo by Carlo Allegri/Getty Images.
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
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