What a film pays today, at every budget
Every figure in this section was read off SAG-AFTRA’s own 2026 theatrical wage table on 8 September 2026. We cross-checked it against the producers’ posted copy of the same tables. The two match exactly.
Start with the thing that dates every other page in this search. SAG-AFTRA members ratified a successor television and theatrical agreement on 4 June 2026, and it took effect on 1 July. It runs to 30 June 2030 and raises minimums by three per cent a year. That compounds to 12.55 per cent across the term.
So a rate published before July is not slightly out. It belongs to a contract that has expired.
One number that is not deducted from you but explains a lot. From 6 September 2026 producers pay a further 22 per cent of your fee into pension and health. Background actors attract 21.5 per cent. That is why a $1,283 day costs a production considerably more than $1,283. It is also why low budget producers care so much about the tier.
A theatrical feature must cover 85 background actors a day under the agreement. From 1 July 2026 that same 85 applies to high budget streaming productions over $30 million running 85 minutes or more. Television covers 26.
The overtime ladder is the part worth knowing. Straight time for eight hours, time and a half for the ninth and tenth, double time from the eleventh to the fifteenth. Past sixteen hours you are owed a full day’s pay for every additional hour.
From 1 July 2026 background actors also receive the same per diem as principals, at $75 a day. Adjustments for wet work, smoke, hairpieces and scripted dialogue exist. We could only verify last year’s figures, because the union has not published a current breakdown sheet.
The Low Budget rate sheet would not open for us. The $834 and $2,896 above are the union’s own published 65 per cent formula, applied to its own 2026 Basic rates. They match what one payroll company publishes. Treat them as high confidence rather than read off the sheet.
There is no credible published figure for non-union background pay anywhere. No union, government body or trade association collects it, and the aggregator sites carry self-reported numbers with no method behind them. We are not going to invent a range.
One widely used indie resource has its own rate table wrong by a factor of ten, printing $2,571 where the rate is $257.10. If a number in this subject looks strange, check it against the union.
That structural difference is the thing to carry away. An American performer is paid a session fee and then paid again, in instalments, for years, depending on how the film travels. A British performer is far more likely to be paid once, in full. The value of every future use is compressed into a multiplier agreed before a frame is shot.
Neither is automatically better, because they distribute risk differently. But 2,469 British performers were surveyed in 2024. Ninety-six per cent said buyouts were increasing, and 84 per cent said the value of residuals was falling. Only the direction of travel is agreed.
Nineteen pages answer this question, and one has the current rate
We opened every page ranking for this search and for the broader term, and checked each figure against the union’s wage table. What follows is the whole field, counted.
The rates leave fingerprints, which makes the dating easy. A page quoting $1,246 a day is on the final year of the 2023 agreement, which expired on 30 June 2026. A page quoting $1,082 is on the rate sheet of 1 July 2022. A page quoting $1,005 is somewhere around 2019.
Backstage ranks first for this exact search with a page built on the rate sheet of 1 July 2022. Backstage also publishes a second page, updated on 27 August 2026, carrying the correct current rates.
So the same publisher is simultaneously right and four years wrong. The search engine ranks the wrong one for the question that matters. This is not a swipe at Backstage, whose current page is the best thing in the field. It is what happens to any subject where the answer expires annually and the traffic accrues to whichever page is oldest.
The practical instruction is short. Before you trust any figure on this subject, including ours, find the date on the page. Then find the rate sheet it came from. If a page has neither, the number is decoration.
The annual salary the government refuses to publish
Ask what an actor earns in a year and you will be given a number. The federal agency that collects the wage data will not give you one, and it explains why in a sentence.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes only an hourly wage for actors. Its technical notes say that some entertainment workers “are paid hourly rates, but generally do not work 40 hours per week, year round. For these workers, only an hourly wage is reported.” That is the whole explanation, and it is the most useful sentence in this subject.
The most recent figures, from May 2025 and published in May 2026, are a median of $29.05 an hour. The bottom ten per cent earn under $16.50 and the top ten per cent earn over $143.68. The mean of $58.29 is exactly twice the median, which tells you the shape of the thing before you read another word.
Now the arithmetic nobody should do. $29.05 multiplied by 2,080 hours gives $60,424. That is the calculation the statistics agency declines to perform. It does not accept that actors work a full-time year. Any page giving you an actor’s annual salary around sixty thousand dollars has done it anyway.
Look at the spread rather than any single row. The same occupation, measured in the same month, is worth $33,275 or $75,000 depending on which site you open. That is a gap of two and a third times. None of the seven is lying. They are counting different people by different methods and calling it the same job.
Three official employment figures exist and they measure three different things. The occupational handbook says 67,500 actors and the establishment survey says 55,000. The census counts 34,785 people who describe acting as their main occupation.
The establishment survey does not include self-employed workers, and roughly a quarter of actors are self-employed. The census figure counts only people for whom acting is the primary job. By construction that excludes most of the people reading this page.
We are not going to reconcile them, because they cannot be reconciled. We are telling you they exist so that you know what has been left out of any single number you are shown.
What comes off the top before you see any of it
Scale is a gross figure. Between the rate on the wage table and the money in your account sit several other people. An agent, possibly a manager, the union, and a tax position most actors are not warned about.
Start with the agent, because the rule here is better than its reputation. Ten per cent is a genuine cap under the union’s own agency regulations, and it is the agent’s entire compensation. A franchised agent may collect no other fees or commissions from you or from the employer.
Then the part almost nobody explains. An agent may not commission scale work at all. The regulations require the agent to negotiate above scale, generally scale plus ten, in order to earn anything from your session fee.
So an actor booked at bare minimum keeps the whole minimum. Scale plus ten is not a raise for you, it is the producer covering the agent’s cut so that your rate survives intact. That is worth knowing before you feel grateful for it.
That last row is the harshest fact on this page. An American actor paid as an employee can hand over ten per cent to an agent and fifteen to a manager. That comes out of money the federal government has already taxed. No deduction is available for either.
A loan-out is a company you own that contracts with the production and employs you. No union, government body or academic source publishes a threshold at which one becomes worthwhile.
One accountancy firm serving entertainment clients puts the crossover at around $150,000 of net annual self-employment income. It gives running costs of four to eight thousand dollars a year. We are quoting them because they are specific and dated, not because it is a general truth.
This is not tax advice and this page is not qualified to give any. It is a pointer to a question worth asking a professional, at roughly the income where asking starts to pay for itself.
British performers face a different arithmetic. Equity charges by income band rather than by percentage. A performer under £40,000 pays £198 a year, against roughly two per cent of covered earnings for an American on the same money. There is no published standard agent commission in the United Kingdom, and value added tax may sit on top of whatever is agreed.
What a living costs, counted in bookings
The most useful number in American acting is not a salary. It is the amount of covered earnings that buys a year of union health insurance, because it converts cleanly into days of work.
For the 2026 benefit year that figure is $28,090, measured across four consecutive quarters. It rises every year of the current contract, reaching $31,616 by 2030.
Divide it by the current day rate and the answer is stark. Twenty-two day-player bookings on a studio feature, in a single year, buys health coverage. At weekly scale it is a little over six weeks of work.
Twenty-two studio days is not a modest year. For most working actors it would be an exceptional one, and it is the floor rather than a living.
The British study puts the conclusion plainly, and it is the only place we found it said with a method behind it. The typical performer who spends most of their working time performing does not earn a minimum wage equivalent from performing. Almost all of them make up the difference from a second job or a partner’s income.
The top end, and the small amount of it that is actually documented
Star pay is where every page in this search waves its hands. Very little of it is on the record, so this section is short and every entry says who reported it.
Which brings us to what net profits mean, and there is one properly documented case rather than the dozen that circulate unsourced.
The film had taken around $288 million. The studio’s accounting reported no net profit at all. The court examined the contract and found specific provisions unconscionable.
Among them were three separate overhead charges. Fifteen per cent on the talent participation, a further fifteen per cent on the production company allowance, and ten per cent on advertising. The studio also charged interest on that overhead, and on the profit participation payments themselves. Eighty per cent of videocassette receipts were excluded from gross, before a distribution fee was levied on the remainder.
Overhead charged on overhead, and interest charged on both. Paramount settled for roughly $900,000, and as a condition of settling, the unconscionability ruling was vacated.
So it is not binding precedent, and we are not presenting it as any. It is a trial court’s documented findings about how one studio’s net profit formula actually worked, which is quite enough. If you are offered a percentage of net, this is the thing to read first.
At the other end of the same system sit the cheques that made the 2023 strike. One actor received twenty-seven dollars and thirty cents in residuals for more than forty episodes of a streaming series. Another received three cents. A third received cheques for one and two pennies.
Those are television residuals rather than film, and we say so because the distinction matters. What they illustrate is not that residuals are small. A formula written for one distribution model was applied to another. That is what the last two negotiations have been about.
What you are paid to audition, which is not nothing
Almost every actor believes auditions are unpaid. For self-tapes that is now explicit contract language. For rooms and callbacks it is simply untrue, and the money goes unclaimed.
Take the self-tape first. Under the current agreement a company is not required to compensate a performer for any self-tape audition. The union’s own bulletin on self-tapes contains no compensation provision at all.
What the bulletin does contain is a set of limits worth knowing, because they are enforceable. Sides are capped at eight pages for a first tape and twelve for a subsequent one. You get 48 hours to submit, or 72 if you are under eighteen.
And three more that people routinely give away. You cannot be required to memorize, and you cannot be marked down for holding the sides. You cannot be required to buy specific editing software, equipment or an upload service. You cannot be asked for nudity or stunts, and from 2026 your audition cannot be made public without your written consent.
First and second auditions. Nothing for the first hour from your call time or arrival, whichever is later. After that you are owed $42 for every additional half hour.
Third audition. Nothing for the first two hours, provided three or fewer performers are called back per role and none is on a first audition. If that condition is not met, it is $167.94 for the first two hours plus $42 a half hour.
Fourth and beyond. Same condition. If it is not met, $335.87 for the first four hours plus $42 a half hour.
Pension and health contributions apply to audition payments. If you are not paid, the claim has to be filed within fifteen business days. That is the reason most of this money is never seen.
One last thing on the way in, and it is a genuine gap rather than a rule people forget. Nothing entitles you to be told which agreement or budget tier a film is shot under before you accept the job.
We read the union’s guidance and one of the low budget agreements in full to check. The guidance puts the burden on the performer to arrive informed. The agreement allows your contract to reach you as late as the first day of work. The 2026 negotiation added several new producer notification duties and this was not among them.
So the only reliable check is to ask before you say yes. Ask casting which SAG-AFTRA agreement the production is signatory to. Or ring the union and ask whether the title is signatory, and under which agreement. That is a workaround rather than a right, and it takes one phone call.
Seven numbers in this subject that we could not source
Every one of these is widely published, and several are repeated by sites we otherwise rate. Not one of them survived being checked. None appears anywhere else on this page.
We are publishing this section because leaving it out would have made the page look more complete than the evidence allows. A number you cannot source is not a small problem in a subject where people plan a career around the answer.
Grading the sources
This page publishes exact dollar figures, counts nineteen competitors, quotes a court and refuses seven widely repeated statistics. So it owes you the method behind each.
Where we differ from the standard account
How much does an actor make per movie?
Commonly saidA single figure, usually annual, usually derived from a job board, and usually with no union rate anywhere on the page.
What we foundSeven published tiers from $1,283 down to nothing at all, decided by the budget rather than by the size of the part.
Are the rates on these pages current?
Commonly saidPresented as current everywhere, including on two payroll companies quoting rates to producers.
What we foundOne page of nineteen carries the rate in force. The page ranking first is on a rate sheet from July 2022.
What does an actor earn in a year?
Commonly saidBetween $33,275 and $75,000, depending entirely on which salary aggregator you happen to open.
What we foundThe federal statistics agency declines to publish an annual figure at all, and states in writing why.
Does the agent take ten per cent of everything?
Commonly saidYes, stated flatly, with no mention of what the union regulations actually permit.
What we foundAn agent may not commission scale work. At bare minimum you keep the whole minimum, and scale plus ten is why.
Are auditions unpaid?
Commonly saidAssumed universally, and self-tapes are indeed unpaid by explicit agreement.
What we foundIn-person callbacks are paid past published thresholds, with a fifteen business day window to claim that almost nobody uses.
Can I find out what tier the film is on?
Commonly saidNever raised, on any page in this search, in either direction.
What we foundNothing entitles you to know before you accept, and your contract may lawfully arrive on your first day of work.
What does a percentage of net profits mean?
Commonly saidExplained with a list of famous films that supposedly lost money, almost none of it sourced.
What we foundOne properly documented case, in which a court itemised overhead charged on overhead and interest charged on both.
What is the first speaking role worth?
Commonly saidBands of twenty to fifty thousand dollars for a supporting film role appear on three separate pages.
What we foundNo published dataset of over-scale premiums exists. Trade reporting says a first feature pays scale and nothing above it.
So the answer to the question is a date before it is a number. Find out which agreement the film is signatory to. Check the rate against the union’s current wage table rather than against a page. And remember that the figure you are quoted is a gross. It has not yet met your agent, your manager, your union or the tax office. Twenty-two studio days a year buys you health insurance. Almost everything written about this subject is describing the other seven per cent.