Count Michael Shannon as someone who is sick and tired of seeing actors who make indie flicks not getting paid enough. The Midnight Special star talked about the issue at a recent screening for a new movie called Complete Unknown, starring Rachel Weisz, Kathy Bates and Danny Glover, which is, yes, an indie, and pointed out that a lot of times, actors who appear in such small movies, no matter how good they are, tend to be compensated more via exposure and less the old fashioned way: by getting paid.
“It tends to be the model these days,” Shannon answered when asked if too many great actors willing to work for almost nothing if offered a great script, per Variety.
“I think as a group actors need to stop enabling this behavior. There’s no reason it should be that way. If somebody’s got a good script and you want to put good actors in it then everybody should be taken care of. We’re not asking for millions and millions of dollars. It’s gone too far in the other direction really. If it was just me I wouldn’t care. I probably would do it for free. But I have a family.”
Shannon, who earned himself an Oscar nomination for 2008’s Revolutionary Road, seems to mix bigger material with the smaller stuff. He played General Zod in Man of Steel, co-starred in HBO’s Boardwalk Empire and had a very funny extended cameo in last year’s Seth Rogen stoner-Christmas movie The Night Before. But check out his IMDB page and you’ll see a slew of titles that are firmly entrenched in the indie world. In other words, the man knows from whence he speaks on this particular topic.
(via Variety)
