After rising to fame, getting on a big blockbuster, or starring on a show for years,
some actors feel they deserve a pay-raise. And sometimes, it’s what got them fired. But how much
was too much? Can you really fire the Fresh-Prince and Spider-Man? Keep watching to find out.
When fans first saw 1982's "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan,"
they were likely confused for a couple of minutes. Instead of Captain Kirk,
played by William Shatner, at the helm, the film opens with the young Starfleet officer
Saavik commanding the crew of the Enterprise. This eventually proves to be a simulation,
and we learn Saavik — a Vulcan played by Kirstie Alley in one of her first roles — is a trainee.
But she leaves a deep impression in that first scene and throughout the rest of the film.
Saavik appears twice more in the film series, but without Alley. In 1984's "Star Trek III:
The Search for Spock" and 1986's "Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home," it's Robin Curtis who steps
into the role, and then the character disappears forever. So, what happened to the original Saavik?
According to Alley in her 2016 interview with StarTrek.com,
it wasn't so much that she asked for more but that she was offered less. Alley said,
"That never made sense to me. Like,
you're not paying as much as the first one, and it's a bigger role?"
She added that in spite of her asking, quote, "sort of gently"
the reason for the lowball, she never got an answer and was replaced without explanation.
Tank — played by Marcus Chong — is one of the few members of the Nebuchadnezzar's
crew to survive the events of 1999's "The Matrix." But unlike the other three survivors,
Tank doesn't show up in either of the sequels, and the story of why swerves into bizarre territory.
The writer/director team of the Wachowskis wanted Chong to reprise the role of Tank, and sources
differ on what he was offered. In Chong's own 45-minute YouTube documentary "The Marcus Chong
Story," he says the Wachowskis offered him $250,000 to appear in 2003's "The Matrix
Reloaded" and "The Matrix Revolutions." Other sources put the figure at $400,000. Regardless,
neither amount was enough for Chong, who wanted $1 million. When the Wachowskis said no,
Chong resorted to a strange negotiation strategy. Chong had a lawyer send a letter to the Wachowskis
in which he asked either for $500,000 or he would do the work for free. Apparently, the Wachowskis
had enough because they chose option three and had Tank killed off-screen between movies.
*Tank spits in disgust*
In the aftermath, Chong unsuccessfully sued the Wachowskis, their production company Eon,
Warner Bros., and AOL Time Warner. He was also arrested for allegedly
making threatening phone calls to the filmmakers.
After the Red Skull surprised everyone by appearing on the distant planet Vormir in 2018's
"Avengers: Infinity War," it may have also surprised a lot of fans that it was not
Hugo Weaving playing the spectral guide. Though he originated the role in 2011's "Captain America:
The First Avenger," Ross Marquand of "The Walking Dead" fame had taken over.
As early as a year after "The First Avenger" was released in theaters,
Weaving told Collider he had no interest in reprising the role, saying,
“I think I’ve done my dash with that sort of film. It was good to do it and try it out,
but to be honest, it’s not the sort of film I seek out and really am excited by.”
Acknowledging he signed a multi-picture deal,
Weaving insisted he didn't think Marvel would try to force the matter if he said no.
It turns out, however, that Weaving was willing to reprise the role of Red Skull for
"Infinity War" and its 2019 follow-up "Avengers: Endgame." However, it wound
up being Marvel Studios who tried to change the terms of the actor's multi-picture deal.
In 2020, he told Time Out that Marvel low-balled him in their re-negotiations.
While Weaving didn't give precise figures, he said Marvel offered him much less for the two films.
The late Valerie Harper was a successful sitcom star throughout the '70s.
She rose to fame on "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," eventually earning her own spinoff
series "Rhoda." She led her own series again in the '80s, NBC's "Valerie," in which she
played a mother trying to raise three sons mostly on her own, with her husband Michael,
an airline pilot who’s often away for work. Coincidentally, the series also proved an
early high point in the career of a young Jason Bateman, who played Valerie's eldest son David.
"Valerie" proved a hit and in Season 2, Harper decided to take advantage
of the situation. Originally receiving $56,750 per episode, according to People,
along with 10 percent of the show's adjusted gross profits, Harper asked for a significant
bump to $100,000 per episode and 35 percent of the adjusted gross profits. When NBC said no,
Harper stopped showing up for work. NBC came back with a counter — $65,000 per episode and
12.5 percent. Even still, they apparently didn't plan to pay her that for very long,
because she was fired after filming only one more episode. Her character was killed off,
and the show was first renamed "Valerie's Family" and eventually "The Hogan Family."
In July 2012, Jennifer Lopez told the world she was leaving her position as
judge on "American Idol." She broke the news on Ryan Seacrest's radio show "On the Air,"
just a day after Aerosmith frontman Steven Tyler announced his own exit from the show. At the time,
J-Lo told Seacrest she was leaving because "Idol" was monopolizing her time, explaining,
"I honestly feel like the time has come that I have to get back to
doing the other [...] things that I have to do."
“It’s been a joy for me to sit here and watch this for so many years. Thank you.”
But it wasn't long before word of a different reason for Lopez's departure emerged. According
to TheWrap, Lopez wasn't leaving to devote more time to other pursuits — she was fired. The site
claimed that the performer, who was reportedly earning $15 million as an "American Idol" judge,
felt she was underpaid and wanted $17 million. According to TheWrap's source, Lopez was let go
after asking, with Fox looking to rework the show because of a steep decline in ratings.
Of course between her musical career, her acting, and more, it's doubtful J-Lo felt
much financial hardship in the interim, but even if she had it wouldn't matter much.
She was rehired the following year and remained as a judge until the end of the series' time on Fox.
There remains no official word on exactly why Jaimee Foxworth's "Family Matters" character
disappeared in the show's fourth season, beyond co-creator William Bickley saying it was for,
quote, "budget considerations." After "Mama's Wedding," Foxworth's character
Judy was never seen again. Rather than recast Judy for the show's five remaining seasons,
her existence was utterly forgotten. One persistent
rumor puts the blame for her departure on the doorstep of Foxworth's mother.
According to an alleged BET article, Gwynn Fox — Foxworth's mother and manager — demanded more
money for her daughter and instead Foxworth's contract wasn't renewed. This has never been
confirmed, however it could easily be what Bickley was talking about when he mentioned
budget considerations. Foxworth wouldn't work as an actor on television again, and
in later years confessed to difficult struggles including walking a difficult road to sobriety.
By 1982, the action comedy "The Dukes of Hazzard" wasn't only one of the most-watched
shows on television, it was also a huge source of ancillary revenue for producers and CBS.
According to the New York Times, it generated around $125 million in annual sales of T-shirts,
toys, and lunch boxes, as well as all the money in from premium advertising rates.
The show's stars, actors John Schneider and Tom Wopat, thought they were largely responsible for
the lucrative popularity of the show and as such thought they should be more fairly compensated for
their efforts. In 1982, the two stars threatened to leave the show, demanding that producer Warner
Bros. give them a raise in their salaries and a piece of the merchandising profits.
Warner Bros. [“brothers”], however, thought Schneider and Wopat were expendable.
They let the actors leave "The Dukes of Hazzard" and then staged a big national search to find
two new Dukes. After auditioning more than 2,000 actors, Warner picked Byron Cherry and Christopher
Mayer to play Coy and Vance Duke, explaining that Bo and Luke had left home and joined NASCAR.
Warner miscalculated the popularity of Schneider and Wopat. With Cherry and Mayer headlining,
"The Dukes of Hazzard" fell from #6 in the ratings to #34 for the 1982-'83
season. They had little choice but to lure back Schneider and Wopat with substantial pay raises.
We know, we know — Tobey Maguire was in "Spider-Man 2," along with its follow-up
"Spider-Man 3." But, before that could happen, the web-shooter needed to be fired,
re-hired, and briefly threatened with being replaced by Jake Gyllenhaal.
As recounted by Screen Crush, when Maguire learned how much Sony had made from 2002's
"Spider-Man," his $4 million payday seemed far too small a slice of the pie.
So during negotiations, Maguire did something many saw as a tactic — he didn't show up. He
was supposed to report to get his face and body scanned for the visual effects of "Spider-Man
2." However, Maguire said that due to mild discomfort in his lower back from an injury
sustained while filming 2003's "Seabiscuit," he wouldn't be able to show up for work.
"My back. My back."
Rather than suffer what they saw as a bluff on Maguire's part, Sony fired him and soon afterward
director Sam Raimi and some of the producers met with Jake Gyllenhaal about taking over the role.
Maguire reportedly panicked, had his future father-in-law Ron Meyer — then the Vice
Chairman of NBC Universal — run interference for him, and won the coveted role back.
“Wooo! I’m back! I’m back!”
"The Godfather" was a universally acclaimed classic of American cinema that was both a
box office blockbuster and the winner of many Academy Awards. The sequel was
thoroughly welcomed in theaters in 1974, just two years after the release of the first film.
Both a sequel and a prequel, "The Godfather Part II" switches between
the continuing adventures of Michael Corleone and Vito Corleone. Robert De Niro playing the
younger version of the character from "The Godfather" that won Marlon Brando an Oscar.
Francis Ford Coppola, director and co-writer of both films,
tried to get Brando to return to the franchise and reprise the role.
According to The Daily Mail, in 1973 Coppola sent a letter to Brando to plead his case, writing,
"Marlon, I respect you enormously; and if you told me that you did not want to do it,
I would accept that and never mention it again."
According to IndieWire, Brando was scheduled to film his cameo but didn't show up on the
shooting day because he was in the middle of a financial dispute with Paramount Pictures.
Just weeks after his long-running hit sitcom "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" went off the air,
Will Smith got his movie career off the ground. Starring as wisecracking,
alien-killing fighter pilot Captain Steven Hiller in "Independence Day,"
his sci-fi action thriller became the highest-grossing movie of 1996.
Smith zoomed onto the A-list of film stars, becoming one of the top paid actors in Hollywood,
headlining big moneymakers like "Men in Black," "Hancock," "I am Legend," and "I, Robot."
Afterward, Smith wasn't averse to appearing in sequels. He starred in three "Bad Boys" movies
and three "Men in Black" films. Even still, when the long-awaited "Independence Day" follow-up
"Independence Day: Resurgence" finally hit theaters in 2016, Smith wasn't in the cast. His
character, Captain Hiller, was said to have died offscreen some time before the events of the film.
According to The Independent, director Roland Emmerich started putting the sequel together
in 2011, at which time Smith agreed to star in two continuations for a total of
$50 million. That, Emmerich said, made the actor's services, quote, "too expensive."
In its first 20 years on the air, "The Simpsons" earned $1 billion in profits for Fox, according to
Today. Its six main voice performers are paid relatively well for their role in the series,
earning as much as $400,000 per episode, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Maggie Roswell served as a supporting member of "The Simpsons" voice cast, appearing frequently
as auxiliary characters, notably holier-than-thou neighbor lady Maude Flanders. As of the eleventh
season of "The Simpsons" in 1999-2000, Roswell's appearances grew more infrequent until she
disappeared entirely. It all ended with Maude Flanders' violent, shocking, and darkly comic
death. She falls off a racetrack grandstand when hit by a projectile from a T-shirt cannon.
According to the Los Angeles Times, Fox said Roswell left the show because she'd grown tired of
commuting from her home in Denver to "Simpsons" production facilities in Southern California.
Roswell disputed that, claiming she asked for a raise from her standard
$1,500 to $2,000 per episode fee to $6,000. Fox offered an additional $150 per paycheck,
so she quit, as that sum didn't even cover the cost of a plane ticket from Denver to L.A.
The late TV show creator Garry Marshall ended his career by directing a trio of ensemble
romantic comedies with multiple, intersecting plot lines that take place around holidays.
Before "Mother's Day" and "New Year's Eve," he kicked off the unofficial trilogy with
"Valentine's Day," starring a slew of big names. This included Julia Roberts,
Anne Hathaway, Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Garner, Topher Grace, and Patrick Dempsey.
Not among the cast: Dempsey's "Grey's Anatomy" co-star Katherine Heigl .
In May 2009, Page Six reported that Heigl was slated to appear in "Valentine's Day,"
but during salary negotiations, she and her team asked for a $3 million fee. An
insider on the movie said that such a figure was ridiculous. They claimed that every performer on
the project would be filming for no more than two weeks and that no other actors
asked for nearly that amount. Ultimately producers went in a non-Heigl direction.
As one of the top-grossing stars in the world, and for more than 30 years at that,
Tom Cruise is generally a go-to guy for a Hollywood movie studio. This is especially
true if they want to spend a ton of money on a big-budget, stunts-and-effects-heavy action movie.
In 2008, on the heels of a third "Mission: Impossible" entry and a remake of "War of
the Worlds," Cruise was circling his next project: a high-octane spy thriller for Columbia Pictures
called "Edwin A. Salt." According to Variety, Cruise was willing to portray the title character,
a CIA operative accused of being an enemy sleeper agent who must evade pursuant authorities and
clear his name. However, he wanted a sizable fee for his acting services: a whopping $20 million.
Columbia's parent company, Sony, balked at the price tag and backed away from Cruise.
The studio ultimately hired Angelina Jolie, and reworked "Edwin A. Salt" into "Salt,"
a film which earned nearly $300 million at the global box office. Oddly enough, according
to the New York Post, Jolie earned for "Salt" exactly what Cruise had asked for — $20 million.
One of CBS's most recognizable and enduring brands, the tropical-set crime procedural
"Hawaii Five-O" originally ran from 1968 to 1980. Afterward, a reboot returned to
typically high ratings from 2010 to 2020. Similar to CBS's many other crime shows,
the new "Five-O" was an ensemble series about a tight-knit law enforcement team,
two of which were actors Daniel Dae Kim and Grace Park.
With production about to start on Season 8 in 2017, Kim and Park entered contract renewal
negotiations, teaming up in hopes of getting a better deal. According to The Hollywood Reporter,
Kim and Park asked for raises that would bring them to a salary at or very close
to those of other cast members. However, CBS refused to give the actors what they wanted,
so they quit the show. A CBS insider assured THR that race wasn't a factor
in paying Kim and Park less, but the actors weren't so sure. Kim wrote on Facebook,
"I encourage us all to look beyond the disappointment
of this moment to the bigger picture."
Park was a bit more diplomatic, telling EW that there were a number of factors that contributed
to her exit, but that she ultimately walked away because it was best for her integrity.
After quietly premiering in 2000, "CSI" would become one of the most popular and most imitated
shows on television. The ensemble crime procedural about forensic investigators in Las Vegas was the
second-most-watched drama on TV by the end of the 2003-2004 TV season. Shortly after, original cast
members George Eads and Jorja Fox found themselves fired from the franchise-launching series.
According to People, Fox and Eads were under contract with CBS, and the network wished to
extend, offering a raise of $20,000 per episode each. When Fox and Eads didn't show up to shoot
a "CSI" episode in July 2004, network executives took that as a sign of silent protest that the
pay bump was insufficient. CBS's response to the no-shows was firing Eads and Fox, but they rehired
them two weeks later at their old salaries, canceling the $20,000-per-episode raises.
In the first decade of the 2000s, few people were as famous or omnipresent as Paris Hilton. Part
of the mega-wealthy Hilton family, she became famous for being a conventionally attractive,
club-hopping scenester who parlayed her visibility into a hit Fox reality show
"The Simple Life." Hilton also made a sex tape that was leaked online. Establishing a persona
as a disaffected prima donna, Hilton even filed a trademark for her oft-muttered catchphrase,
"That's hot."
Hilton was just about at the peak of her fame and influence in 2009 when she secured a small role
in "The Other Guys," a police comedy starring Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg. An insider on the movie
told Page Six that while Hilton's part amounted to a cameo, the celebrity's representatives delivered
a hefty list of requirements for their client. Among Hilton's needs for her one-day shoot were
live lobsters to be cooked at a moment's notice, and top-shelf Grey Goose vodka. The
director ultimately cut Hilton's appearance from the theatrical cut of "The Other Guys" entirely.
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