10 Actors Who Were Paid Almost Nothing For Great Roles

8. Harrison Ford - $10,000 (Star Wars)

Wolf Of Wall Street Jonah Hill
Lucasfilm

It's hard to imagine today, but most people involved with the production of Star Wars had a lot of doubts about the commercial viability of the project. Fox didn't even give it the proper theatrical treatment at first, almost too embarrassed to put their weird space movie out into the world.

Today though, Star Wars is one of the biggest things in the universe, and the movies themselves are (generally) surefire box-office performers, paying their actors millions and millions of dollars for their work.

But that first film didn't have anywhere near as much money as the recent Disney productions do, and back then, stars like Harrison Ford simply weren't the huge draws they are today. Nowadays, Ford earns millions of dollars for his movie roles, but on the original Star Wars film, he didn't even come close to earning that sort of money.

In 2015, Ford told ABC News that he received just $1,000 a week for his time on the movie, which added up to about $10,000 in total. Try and offer Harrison Ford $10,000 for a movie today? He'll definitely just stay at home.

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Danny has been with WhatCulture for almost nine years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. He has been writing and video editing for 10+ years, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers and uploading them to YouTube (they're admittedly a bit rusty by today's standards). If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order or to tell you about the making of 1988's Remembrance of the Daleks, Danny is the person to ask.