Elijah Wood says fees for Lord of the Rings actors were ‘not massive’
Star says cast took a ‘gamble’ appearing in Peter Jackson’s hit trilogy and did not earn enough to ‘rest easy’ for life

Elijah Wood has said that his salary for The Lord of the Rings movies was “not massive” and that appearing in the films was “a real gamble”.

According to a report in Business Insider, which carried quotes from the star at the Texas film awards in March, Wood said the fact that the actors had to sign up for all three films at the start meant that their fees were not related to the film’s financial success. “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, who played Frodo Baggins in the trilogy of films directed by Peter Jackson and adapted from the epic novels by JRR Tolkien, said the actors understood the significance of the project. “The benefit of that was that we were also signing up for something that was going to be a part of our lives for ever.”

It has been previously suggested that Wood earned about $250,000 (£190,000) for the first film, but the actor told Business Insider that this figure was not accurate and that “it doesn’t matter”.

The size of the fees paid to the cast of The Lord of the Rings compared to stars of other Hollywood movies has often been noted, with Cate Blanchett, who played the elf Galadriel in the series, saying on the Watch What Happens Live talk show in 2024 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, while Sean Astin (Samwise Gamgee) said he got $250,000.

Released between 2001 and 2003, Jackson’s three-film series grossed $2.96bn at the worldwide box office, with a reported budget of $281m.