Orlando Bloom “only” made $175,000 for original Lord of the Rings trilogy
By Dan Selcke
The Lord of the Rings movies — The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King — grossed nearly $3 billion worldwide since they dropped in the early 2000s. You’d think that, with that kind of money rolling in, pretty much everyone involved would get rich, right?
Well, it depends who you ask. Take Orlando Bloom, who shot to fame on the back of the movies thanks to his turn as Legolas, the long-haired heartthrob elf.
Bloom was a largely unknown actor when he signed on to these movies, and didn’t have the pull to snag himself a meaty contract. “I got nothing [for The Lord of the Rings],” he recently told Howard Stern on his SiriusXM show Howard 100. “175 grand.”
Bloom was gracious to qualify that he considered the movies the “greatest gift of my life,” which is nice. “I’d do it again for half the money.”
Of course, to Bloom, it’s accurate. After Lord of the Rings, he starred in Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, and while we don’t know exactly how much he makes, we can assume it’s a whole hell of a lot, particularly for the final two movies in the trilogy. “I was in a good spot,” he remembered. “They negotiated pretty well for me to buy a couple of houses, it was that kind of money.” And lord only knows how much he’s getting as the lead in Amazon’s Carnival Row.
I know he was just talking casually, but it’s hard to describe $175,000 as “nothing” without sounding pretty out of touch. There are few people in the world for whom getting 175 grand wouldn’t be life-changing. And it gets weirder when you consider that Bloom probably made a lot more movies for reprising the role of Legolas in The Hobbit movies, even though those movies weren’t anywhere near as good.
Everything’s relative, for better or worse.
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h/t Metro