Sean Astin Says He Made So Little Money on ‘LOTR,’ He Had to Sell His House

Sean Astin made it clear that despite how popular the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy was, he and the rest of the cast didn’t make mountains of money.

In a conversation with The Guardian published Monday, Astin looked back on working on the Peter Jackson trilogy back-to-back-to-back. The films became commercial successes and critical darlings at the Academy Awards but that was not reflected in his salary.

“I was not prepared for that level of visibility and access, and there was a disconnect between the attention that I was getting and how much money we had,” Astin said. “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 – who played Samwise Gamgee – said back in 2017 that he was paid $250,000 for the trilogy and that there were “no residuals.” The films were shot all at once and released every year between 2001 and 2003.

Astin is not the only one to talk about the low salary for the films. Since everyone signed on for the entire trilogy at once there was no contractual space to renegotiate once the movies started blowing up. Elijah Wood, who played Frodo Baggins in the films, had a more positive outlook on the casts’ salaries.

“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 in 2025.

He added: “The benefit of that was that we were also signing up for something that was going to be a part of our lives forever.”

Cate Blanchett told Andy Cohen on a 2024 episode of “Watch What Happens Live” that the cast “basically got free sandwiches” to work on the film.

“Are you kidding me? No, no one got paid anything to do that movie,” Blanchett said at the time.

She added: “I wanted to work with the guy who made ‘Braindead,’” she said, referring to Jackson. “I mean, I basically got free sandwiches, and I got to keep my ears. No, no one got paid anything!”