Are US film stars pricing themselves out of big roles?

 

British actors like James McAvoy, who has shone in the Ian McEwan adaptation Atonement and the Idi Amin drama The Last King of Scotland, are being preferred to those like Bourne Ultimatum star Matt Damon, 37.

 

For his most recent release, an action film called Wanted, Mr McAvoy, 29, earned a reported $2.5 million, where Mr Damon's fees are generally over $10m.

 

When casting for heroes with a sensitive side, the industry now prefers someone like the relatively cheap Brit Jim Sturgess, 27, of historical drama The Other Boleyn Girl, to Spiderman star Tobey Maguire, 33, who is now paid over $17m per film.

 

Among actresses, London-born Tilda Swanton, 48, (around $3m per film) is being weighed against established stars like Nicole Kidman, 41, (a minimum of $17.5m per film).

 

Her fellow Londoner Emily Blunt, 25, star of The Devil Wears Prada, is around 10 times cheaper than Speed actress Sandra Bullock, 44, who has earned $15m per film.

The pattern was identified in an article in the Hollywood newspaper Variety last week, in which it named a series of Brits who represented good value.

 

It said they were preferred to the more famous stars because they could fulfil the role for less money while still having international recognition.

 

Other factors are the falling box office sales in the US, and the increasing revenues being generated by Hollywood films outside North America.

 

The report in Variety said: "In the world of foreign sales, there is a parallel universe, with a different group of actors who are considered bankable, even if they've only had a few film credits, as long as those few films were successful enough to give them recognition around the globe."

 

Source: Sunday Telegraph

No suprise really. Some of the Top Hollywood earners, have become expensive because because of their success in major grossing films, so they're obviously going to want more money. At the moment actors like McAvoy and Blunt will be cheaper, but in a few years time this won't be the case imo. Both of them will become huge Hollywood stars within the next few years, McAvoy especially if he gets the role of Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit...

 

Hopefully this can pave the way for more British actors to get into Hollywood, because their are some damm good actors out there at the moment.

Hmm, I see the "Credit Crunch" is affecting Hollywood now as well.... :lol: :lol:

 

Could be because British actors are just maybe not as greedy as their US counterparts..... Ewen McGregor is probably one of the biggest and most known Brit actors and has been for quite a while, but he's never been a money-grabber on the scale of Brad Pitt or Bruce Willis....

 

It's good to see Brit actors doing well out there though, "Wanted", without McAvoy, would've almost certainly have been a complete pile of cr@p, so IMO, he pretty much saved that film from failure......

 

 

Actors, (like Footballers), are overpayed anyway.. :lol: