{"id":714733,"date":"2026-07-28T04:26:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-28T04:26:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/714733\/"},"modified":"2026-07-28T04:26:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-28T04:26:09","slug":"sean-astin-had-to-sell-house-due-to-low-pay-from-lord-of-the-rings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/714733\/","title":{"rendered":"Sean Astin ‘Had to Sell’ House Due to Low Pay From Lord of the Rings"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tSean Astin<\/a>, who played Samwise Gamgee in The Lord of the Rings<\/a> trilogy, has revealed that he had to sell his house at the time because he didn\u2019t make enough money.<\/p>\n

\n\tDuring a recent interview with The Guardian<\/a>, Astin, who now serves as the national president of the actors\u2019 union SAG-AFTRA, opened up about finding fame in the early 2000s when the Peter Jackson-directed film franchise became a global phenomenon, grossing $2.9 billion at the worldwide box office.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI was not prepared for that level of visibility and access,\u201d Astin admitted. \u201cAnd there was a disconnect between the attention that I was getting and how much money we had. It was not a lot of money!\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIn fact, I had to sell my house because I negotiated such a small amount on the trilogy,\u201d the actor added. He previously shared on the Jim and Sam Show<\/a> in 2017 that he earned \u201c$75,000 a movie,\u201d which would make his salary for the whole trilogy around $250,000.<\/p>\n

\n\tDespite becoming one of the highest-grossing film series of all time, Elijah Wood, who played Frodo Baggins, told Business Insider<\/a> last year that the production company New Line Cinema took \u201ca real gamble\u201d financially, filming all three movies at once. As a result, the ensemble cast did not receive \u201cmassive salaries.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cBecause we weren\u2019t making one movie and then renegotiating a contract for the next, it wasn\u2019t the sort of lucrative scenario that you could sort of rest easy for the rest of your life,\u201d Wood explained, adding that the trade-off was \u201cthat we were also signing up for something that was going to be a part of our lives forever.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s been over two decades since The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), The Two Towers (2002) and The Return of the King (2003) hit theaters, and Astin told The Guardian that he\u2019s \u201cvery comfortable financially now.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAs for what\u2019s next for the franchise, Lord of the Rings: Hunt for Gollum<\/a> is currently in development from director Andy Serkis, while another installment with the working title\u00a0The Lord of the Rings:\u00a0Shadow of the Past is also being co-written by Stephen Colbert<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\tAstin hasn\u2019t been confirmed to reprise his role, but he said, \u201cI don\u2019t think anybody is opposed to it. We\u2019d all love to connect to those characters, particularly if it\u2019s done with such sensitivity as we heard.\u201d As for whether he\u2019ll fight for better pay this time, he added, \u201cGoddam right.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sean Astin, who played Samwise Gamgee in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, has revealed that he had…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":714734,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[96,18088,2839,62695,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-714733","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-lord-of-the-rings","tag-movies","tag-sean-astin","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/714733","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=714733"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/714733\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/714734"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=714733"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=714733"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=714733"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}