More than two decades after The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring kicked off one of the most successful film trilogies in cinematic history, star Elijah Wood is setting the record straight about just how much (or little) he and the cast were paid to join Peter Jackson’s Middle-earth epic. Spoiler alert: It wasn’t exactly dwarf gold.
Speaking on the red carpet at the 2025 Texas Film Awards, Wood told Business Insider that the paychecks for The Lord of the Rings movies were far from legendary. "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,” he explained.
That’s not to say Wood's ungrateful. Quite the opposite. He called New Line Cinema’s decision to greenlight all three movies at once, with a massive ensemble cast and no guarantee of box office success, "a real gamble" — one that made sense from a budget perspective. Not having "massive salaries" helped cushion that risk.
Still, Wood said the trade-off was absolutely worth it. "We were also signing up for something that was going to be a part of our lives forever," he said, reflecting on the cultural juggernaut the trilogy would become.
And indeed, the gamble paid off. The Lord of the Rings films brought in nearly $3 billion globally, earned a staggering 17 Oscars, and launched the careers of many of its stars into the stratosphere. For Wood, it paved the way for his current work, including his role in Showtime's Yellowjackets and producing projects through his company SpectreVision.
Wood isn’t the only cast member to speak candidly about the trilogy’s surprisingly modest pay. Orlando Bloom revealed in 2019 that he was paid just $175,000 for all three films — but said he’d "do it again for half that." Sean Astin has said he made around $250,000. As for Wood? When asked if he earned the same amount, he simply said the figure was inaccurate — and that "it doesn’t matter."
Cate Blanchett famously joked that she was "paid in sandwiches" to play Galadriel, which Wood called "hilarious," adding that it wasn’t said with any bitterness. "Statements like that are not made with any kind of ire," he said. "It’s such an honor to have been a part of those films, and they represent some of the best experiences of my life."
In the end, the cast didn’t walk away with mountains of cash — but they did become part of one of the most beloved trilogies of all time. Not bad for a few sandwiches.
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