Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy made over $1 billion at the box office, but apparently none of that really trickled down to the actors. At least not ones like Cate Blanchett, recent star of the less-esteemed Borderlands adaptation, who said in a new interview she basically got paid for being in the movie with sandwiches.
Blanchett had already been nominated for an Academy Award by the time she played the high elf Galadriel in Jackson’s rendition of the Tolkien fantasy books. Amid the Borderlands media tour this week, she was asked on Bravo’s Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen (via Deadline) which movie in her career she’d earned the most from.
Cohen was asked in return to guess, and when he suggested Lord of the Rings, Blanchett scoffed. “Are you kidding me?” she said. “No, no one got paid anything to do that movie.” The actor, best known for her portrayal of Queen Elizabeth I and more recently a disgraced orchestra conductor in Tár, said she wanted to work with Jackson because of his cult zombie classic Braindead (known as Dead Alive in the U.S.).
“I basically got free sandwiches,” Blanchett told Cohen. “And I got to keep my ears.” She explained that in the early aughts, when the Lord of the Rings films came out, actor residuals for box office performance weren’t common, and added that, “Women don’t get paid as much as you think they do.”
Blanchett is now starring as the bounty hunter Lilith in Borderlands, which opened in theaters this week to a truly disastrous Rotten Tomatoes score. She previously said she joined the movie to escape the mid-covid “madness,” though others suggested it was for a bigger payday. I certainly hope she got the bag for her troubles this time.