Aussie star Luke Cook reveals his staggeringly low income in Hollywood amid strike
Luke Cook – who starred in a hit Netflix series and Guardians of the Galaxy – has lifted the lid on his terrible pay amid the actors’ strike.
Australian actor Luke Cook has lifted the lid on his shockingly low pay as Hollywood remains at a standstill due to the ongoing strike.
The Sydney-born star currently lives in LA with his wife and two children, and revealed in a brutally honest social media video that he has to work two additional jobs to supplement his income, despite starring in multiple shows.
The Screen Actors Guild (SAG-AFTRA), which represents 160,000 performers, called a strike last week, joining writers in the first industry-wide shutdown in more than 60 years after last-ditch negotiations failed.
Nearly all film and television production has now ground to a halt, impacting thousands.
Cook, 36, took to TikTok on Friday to explain what had brought them to this point, providing extremely personal details about his own financial experience after starring in shows and films including Netflix’s The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, Dynasty and Guardians of the Galaxy.
“I am not a millionaire,” Cook said in the video.
“I drive a 2010 Mazda S3, and my previous car was a 2006 Ford Tarus. 95 per cent of the actors in SAG cannot make a living from acting, so they’ve got to have side hustles. I am one of those actors.
“The actors that you’re thinking of, who are the millionaires, are usually series regulars or big A-listers in big movies. The actors who are around them, though, are actors like myself: guest stars, co-stars etc., and we’re paid chips.”
Cook then opened up about his pay for appearing on Hulu’s Dollface.
“I did a show called Dollface last year, they put me on a billboard on Sunset Boulevard. Do you know how much they paid me to be on the billboard? Zero,” he said.
“The amount they paid me to be on the show was not much better.”
The actor went on to explain that he was “paid per episode” which equalled “two weeks of work for $US7500”.
“Then it’s taxed, then a manager takes ten per cent, an agent takes ten per cent and then a lawyer takes 5 per cent,” Cook said.
“I am one rung below a series regular, who is making maybe $100,000 per episode. They’re very wealthy and they’re worth it too, they’re usually very talented people.
“A huge portion of this strike is about people like me, who need to be paid more for the work that they do, who are asking for a portion of the profits that these streamers and big companies are bringing in.”
The actors’ strike got off to a dramatic start last week when the cast of one of the year’s most anticipated films walked out of their own movie’s premiere.
The glitzy UK debut of Oppenheimer – which focuses on the story of Robert Oppenheimer, a key player in the creation of the nuclear bomb – was thrown into chaos with Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt, Matt Damon and Florence Pugh all vanishing moments before the film was due to begin.
Director Christopher Nolan told the audience in London’s Leicester Square that his cast had walked out in solidarity with the just-called strike.
“You’ve seen them here earlier on the red carpet,” he said.
“Unfortunately, they’re off to write their picket signs for what we believe to be an imminent strike by SAG, joining one of my guilds, the Writers Guild, in the struggle for fair wages for working members of the unions, and we support them.”
Striking actors join picket lines
Actors took to picket lines outside studio headquarters from California to New York on Friday as movie and television production ground to a halt in the most serious Hollywood strike in decades.
Hundreds of strikers marched with placards at the Netflix building on Los Angeles’ famed Sunset Boulevard, as well as at Disney, Paramount, Warner and Amazon premises, with passing drivers honking their horns in support.
In New York, Jason Sudeikis and Susan Sarandon were among A-listers who showed up for demonstrations, triggered by the refusal of studio bosses to meet actors’ demands for better pay and job security.
“The studios are tone-deaf and greedy, and they need to wake up -- because we are the ones that made them rich,” actress Frances Fisher, who starred in Titanic, told AFP while marching outside Paramount Pictures.
SAG-AFTRA members joined writers who have been on strike for weeks, triggering the first industry-wide walkout for 63 years and effectively shutting down Hollywood.
“We’ve been out here for about 80 days... The fact that SAG-AFTRA went on strike brought a lot of energy, and there’s incredible solidarity,” said “Friends” co-creator Marta Kauffman.
The studios “look like the devil,” she told AFP, at the picket line outside Netflix.
Actors formally went on strike at midnight Thursday after negotiations to reach a new deal with production studios ended without an agreement.
The union’s demands have focused on dwindling pay in the streaming era, and the threat posed by artificial intelligence.
“We’re in this for the long haul, but this is a historic moment,” said Vera Cherny, 44, who has had roles in “The Americans” and “For All Mankind.” “It is time for us to lock down the contracts that are going to serve generations of actors to come. Just like they did in 1960.”
The last time the actors’ union went on strike, in 1980 over the advent of pay television and home video, it lasted more than three months.
This time, the union says actors’ pay has been “severely eroded” by streaming and has warned that artificial intelligence poses “an existential threat.” Ezra Knight, SAG-AFTRA New York local president, said AI “threatened to remove real performers from the creative space.” Studios “want to hold on to their right to take my likeness, in one production... and use that likeness in perpetuity forever,” he warned.
“We want limitations to that, we want consent and to be able to give permission for that.” The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) says it had offered large pay raises and a “groundbreaking” AI proposal to actors.
— with AFP
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