Expert: Taylor Sheppard - 9/22/2008

Question
I know this is quite a hard question to answer but how much roughly would someone get paid for a 2 mintue or so TV commercial because some sites say you get nothing except travel expenses and some say you get something like $100/day and Matt Leblanc once said with one tv commercial he could buy a house, a car, a bike and a wardrobe full of clothes. So he means hundreds of thousands. And also does the pay you get depend on your acting ability or the budget of the company?

Answer
Hi James,

The rate for commercials can be all over the place!

It depends on whether it is a SAG (Screen Actors Guild) sanctioned shoot, a low-budget, non-union shoot, a one-time buyout, a regional aired commercial, a national commercial, an overseas commercial, celebrity endorsement or something else!

A buyout is a one-time deal where you get paid once in a larger amount and generally never collect again, although my agent often renegotiates after 5 or 10 years of use.

The lowest I ever worked for as a principle character was $75.00 a long time ago in a regional. The highest was $1,500. per day for three days for a Miller Light Commercial.

Matt Le Blanc is a celebrity, so the power of his celebrity presence brings a lot of credibility to the product just by association. On the other hand, if the product is tripe and a rip off, the image of the celeb could become tarnished or degraded by association if they don't choose carefully! (Check the web for commercials overseas in Japan and other places starring movie stars)

Until recently, many well known actors here wouldn't do commercials because they didn't want to affect their images ("It just isn't done!") and because they would possibly affect their asking price when doing movies. That's why when stars do cameos in movies, they don't list them in the credits...it's not all about being charitable toward a great project, it's about negotiating their asking price later! How do you ask for 10 million after doing something for $50k?

Some jobs you get because you're the actor that would work "local" meaning they didn't have to pay hotel and meals (per diem)and other ones, they get food, hotel and car rental. It just depends.

In SAG alone, there are different scales of pay for regions, national and industrial, which is for in-house films for companies to show to their employees. They could even be for mammograms or instruction videos for grills and food processors.

Hope this helps!

Taylor