For some roles, actors have to put themselves through incredibly arduous preparation to get into the role.
It can be exercising more than they've ever done, radically altering their appearance, it can be learning an entirely new language or some skill they haven't got, but there's also financial hardships as well. Some actors will forgo huge paycheques because, well, they're artists and it means something to do a particular script.
The problem with Leonardo DiCaprio is that, very often, his paycheque is more than any other actor on the face of the planet - so when you hear that he's taken a 50% pay cut just to sign on for Quentin Tarantino's new film, it's good to remember that he's still going to earn more money than you'll probably ever see in a decade.
Anyway, Variety's reporting that DiCaprio took a $10 million reduction just to star in Tarantino's upcoming film, Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, which puts him on the same scale as Robert Downey Jr.'s ten minutes of screentime in Spider-Man: Homecoming and Sandra Bullock's voicework on Minions. Harrison Ford, meanwhile, will pick up a little more as Variety has it somewhere between $10 and $12 million for Indiana Jones 5.
So, what's any of this going to mean for the finished film? Not a whole lot, really. DiCaprio doesn't really leave his house for anything less than this figure these days, and it's not as if he's short of offers since his Oscar for The Revenant either. The fact that he's signed on for Tarantino's penultimate film does, however, speak to how well they worked together on Django Unchained so obviously he was going to sign up for it no matter what.
Hell, Tarantino probably could have knocked another few quid off the price and DiCaprio would have done it.
Via Variety
