The Wolf of Wall Street has been nominated for five Oscars this year, including one for Jonah Hill, who reveals he took a massive pay cut just to be in the film.
Jonah Hill is now a two-time Oscar nominee, but ironically he wasn’t demanding his normal seven figure salary for Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street where he plays a money hungry drug addict in this year’s greed-infested, f-bomb filled Scorsese epic.
The actor was paid the absolute minimum for his role as Leonardo DiCaprio’s right hand man, pulling in $60,000 before taxes for his Oscar nominated role. In a recent interview with shock jock Howard Stern, the actor explains that he was willing to play the part for peanuts because Scorsese is his absolute favorite director.
He later revealed that the SAG minimum is “something like $60,000 before commissions and taxes.” The actor was paid $60k for an almost seven month shoot.
That’s more than double the length of a normal film’s production, for less than 2% of Hill’s average salary.
Jonah says, “I would sell my house and give him all my money to work for [Scorsese]… I would have done anything in the world. I would do it again in a second.” Despite the lower pay, it’s bound to pay off in the future now that the actor has been nominated for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for his role as Donnie Azoff.
There’s essentially a direct correlation between Oscar nominations and future film salaries, but that doesn’t seem to be Hill’s main focus anyways. The actor says, “It’s not about money for me. None of this shit is about money. I want to make money to pay my rent, and hopefully have a family one day and have kids and stuff.”
Further proof that the actor cares more about the role than the payout is that he reportedly turned down roles in the massive blockbusters The Hangover and Transformers so that he could star opposite John C. Reilly in his 2010 film Cyrus. That film went on to pull in less than $10 million worldwide and would go virtually unseen by his audience.
Explaining why he’s happy with his decision, he says, “I got to f**king be in a Martin Scorsese movie and I just got nominated for an Oscar… I’m in shock.” Jonah also revealed that DiCaprio is his favorite actor as well, which had to make this film an absolute dream job.
It’s interesting to get a behind-the-scenes look at how much the actor was paid to be in the three-hour long hard R-rated film. It’s unusual to find out specific details concerning actor’s salaries and hearing it from the actor himself is even more rare.
And it’s not as though The Wolf of Wall Street was a cheap production by any means. Costing $100 million to make, not counting advertising, The Wolf of Wall Street only ended up pulling in $129 million worldwide.
That’s not necessarily a financial success, but with Oscar nominations that include Best Actor for DiCaprio, Best Supporting for Hill, and Best Picture for the film, it’s certainly turning out to be a critical success. If Hill were to win for Best Supporting Actor, it would undoubtedly be a career changing role for him.
Jonah Hill doesn’t appear worried about his big pay cut in The Wolf of Wall Street and why should he be? He has 21 Jump Street’s sequel hitting theaters in June, which made over $200 million on a $40 million dollar budget. His comedic roles are paying huge dividends, even if his dramatic roles leave something to be desired financially.
It’s refreshing to see an actor so excited to get to work on a film with his favorite director, no matter how many zeros are on his paycheck.