10 Actors Who Were Paid Almost Nothing For Great Roles

4. Hilary Swank - $3,000 (Boys Don't Cry)

hilary swank boys don't cry
Fox Searchlight Pictures

Hilary Swank won an Oscar for her role as Brandon Teena in 1999 drama Boys Don't Cry, which is generally a sign that you're doing quite well in Hollywood, both financially and in terms of choosing quality projects.

But bizarrely, Swank made almost nothing for delivering such a powerful, award-winning performance. The actress received a grand total of $3,000 for her work, despite her being the lead of the film. Swank later stated that this figure was so low, that it even caused complications with her health insurance:

"When I did Boys Don’t Cry, I was 24 years old. I made $3,000. In order to have health insurance, you have to make $5,000, so I didn’t even know that I didn’t have health insurance until I went and tried to get a prescription filled. I had an Academy Award [and] no health insurance."

Boys Don't Cry went on to make over $20 million worldwide, earned countless awards, and was even selected for preservation by the Library Of Congress. So it's pretty crazy to think that its lead actress couldn't even afford basic health cover.

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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!