10 Actors Who Were Paid Almost Nothing For Great Roles

7. Bill Murray - $9,000 (Rushmore)

Rushmore Bill Murray
Buena Vista Pictures

Thanks to the likes of Ghostbusters, Tootsie, Scrooged and Groundhog Day, Bill Murray was one of the most bankable movie stars of the 1980s and 1990s, able to easily command seven-figure salaries for his presence on a project.

However, things didn't quite work out like that when he signed up to appear in Rushmore, Wes Anderson's 1998 comedy-drama about a teenager and a business magnate who both fall in love with the same woman.

In fact, rather than a seven-figure salary, Murray walked away from the film with a payday in the four-figure range, earning just $9,000 overall. This is because the actor was only paid the minimum amount he was owed - in accordance with the guidelines laid out by SAG (the Screen Actors Guild), that is.

$9,000 is scraps to someone like Bill Murray, but his low income on Rushmore didn't exactly put him off working with Anderson in the future: the pair have collaborated on every single one of the director's films since.

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Danny has been with WhatCulture for over ten years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. In 2022, he took charge of WhoCulture and has grown it into the biggest Doctor Who channel on YouTube, and one of the biggest Doctor Who communities on the web full-stop. He has been writing and video editing since his early teens, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers, off the back of a burning obsession with the Matt Smith era of the show. Like many his age, he first got into Doctor Who with the 2005 revival, but has since gone back and fallen in love with the classic years too. If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order, or to give you a random factoid about the making of Gridlock, Danny is the person to ask!