Elijah Wood Addresses His 'Lord of the Rings' Pay

justjared.com:

Elijah Wood, who famously played Frodo Baggins in the Lord of the Rings franchise, is opening up about his salary.

The 44-year-old actor spoke out at the 2025 Texas Film Awards about his pay for the film franchise. During a discussion with Business Insider, he revealed that despite the franchise becoming one of the highest-grossing of all time in cinema history, he didn’t actually make all that much money. Keep reading to find out more… “Because we weren’t making one movie and then renegotiating a contract for the next, it wasn’t the sort of lucrative scenario that you could sort of rest easy for the rest of your life,” he said, going on to say director Peter Jackson took “a real gamble” shooting the Rings trilogy simultaneously.

The cast never had a chance to renegotiate salaries as a result, and the Lord of the Rings trilogy ultimately grossed a historic $2.9 billion worldwide, easily eclipsing its budget of $281 million at the time.

Despite making “not massive salaries, the benefit of that was that we were also signing up for something that was going to be a part of our lives forever.” Series star Sean Astin previously disclosed that he earned around $250,000, while Orlando Bloom said he was paid $175,000 across all three movies.