Sean Astin said in a new interview with The Guardian that he was forced to sell his house amid “The Lord of the Rings” fame in the early 2000s because he negotiated such a small salary to play Samwise Gamgee in Peter Jackson’s landmark movie trilogy. The reveal may come as a shock to fans considering the “Rings” movies were cultural phenomenons that grossed $2.9 billion at the worldwide box office between 2001 and 2003.
“I was not prepared for that level of visibility and access,” Astin told the publication. “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 noted that he is “very comfortable financially now,” but that wasn’t the case when “The Lord of the Rings” was dominating box office charts. Peter Jackson and the team behind the “Rings” trilogy famously shot all three movies at once, meaning there was no opportunity for the cast to renegotiate their salaries based of the success of each installment.
“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,” Astin’s “Rings” co-star Elijah Wood told Business Insider last year. Wood noted that New Line Cinema took a “real gamble” filming all three movies at once. To mitigate financial risk, the ensemble cast was offered “not massive salaries,” the Frodo actor said.
