Jonah Hill – The Wolf of Wall Street
Martin Scorsese is one of those directors every actor dreams of working with. This honor is a great lever to get actors to work for much less money than they usually receive.By the time The Wolf of Wall Street started to be shot, Jonah Hill had already recommended himself as a good actor who had even received an Oscar nomination for the Moneyball. Nevertheless, the opportunity to star in the Martin Scorsese film was such an exciting prospect that Hill agreed to do it for a minor by the Hollywood standards $ 60,000.

Bill Murray – Rushmore
Being one of the main Hollywood comedy stars in the 80s and early 90s Bill Murray’s career declined during the decade, when the legendary actor seemed to stop caring about roles.
In addition to such a pay cut, Bill also helped in transporting the equipment for free and gave Anderson a blank check to cover the staging costs, which the production company refused to extra pay for.
Harrison Ford – Star Wars. Episode IV: A New Hope
Few believed in George Lucas’s and the Star Wars’ success, which resulted in a rather small budget. Nevertheless, the budget for the fourth episode, the New Hope was already 11 million dollars and that was already a huge budget for a science fiction film from the 1970s.Despite the opportunities the filmmakers continued to save particularly on the cast. For example, Harrison Ford earned a small amount of $10,000 for helping to create one of the most iconic characters in the history of cinema.
It is curious that even after the Star Wars had become a hit, Harrison’s salary in The Empire Strikes Back episode grew only to $100,000.
Gal Gadot – Wonder Woman
Wonder Woman was released at a time when superhero films, whether Marvel or DC, were guaranteed to have a record success. Despite the so-called adventure of making a film about a superheroine in the lead role, no one expected that the Wonder Woman would collect almost a billion dollars in a movie.
Jeff Daniels – Dumb and Dumber
Yes, $50,000 was good money for Jeff Daniels to play in the Farrelly Brothers comedy, especially since no one expected it to bring hundreds of millions of dollars. However, it is worth recalling how much the second lead actor Jim Carrey received.
George Clooney – Good Night, and Good Luck
Good night and good luck became a financially disastrous project for George Clooney, because he was paid only a dollar for what he had written, shot and played in the film. The actor laid his house to finance the project and because of the serious injury he had previously received while shooting the Syriana, he couldn’t even receive proper medical care.Ryan Gosling – Half Nelson
Ryan Gosling is a graduate of the Mickey Mouse Club along with such stars as Justin Timberlake, Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera. While his peers were already on the top of all the charts, Gosling was a teenage actor, appearing on second-rate TV shows.
Mel Gibson – Mad Max
Mad Max is a brilliant franchise of the 70s, which was continued in the 21st century. The story of the creation of the picture began simultaneously with the career of then rising star Mel Gibson.Chris Evans – Captain America: The First Avenger
No one surely knew how deafening would the Iron Man be and it was the picture that would launch a huge cinematic universe worth several billion dollars. But by the time The First Avenger was in production and was already the fifth Marvel film, so everyone was expecting millions of box office cash.
Sean Astin – The Lord of the Rings trilogy
The Lord of the Rings trilogy by Peter Jackson was one of the most ambitious cinematic events in the history of Hollywood, which involved hundreds of actors for an exhausting 438 days (not counting the annual re-filming over the next three years) and with a budget of almost 400 million dollars.