‘Your Rich BFF’ Vivian Tu: How Much Actors Get Paid Filming TV Episodes
Written by
Tiffany Lew
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Rebekah Evans
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Like every possible role out there, acting salaries have a far and wide-reaching range. Business woman and finance influencer Vivian Tu did a podcast with actor Nico Santos about how much television actors — from working class actors to celebrities and household names — can expect to be paid per episode. The numbers may surprise you.
Santos said the “low, low range” for starting out is $15,000 to $20,000 per episode. The high-range — which entails more well-known working actors that may not be huge stars — means six figures, from $150,000 to $175,000, per episode. And finally, a “pretty big star” could be paid $400,000 per episode.
From a more general standpoint, the average actor’s salary in the U.S. in 2025 is $56,903 annually, according to Ziprecruiter. The median pay for actors in the U.S. in May 2024 was $23.33 per hour, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).
It’s helpful to put all this into perspective: according to Forbes, Dwane Johnson was the top paid actor in 2024, making $88 million and Ryan Reynolds was runner up with $85 million.
And actor employment in the U.S. is projected to grow five percent from 2023 to 2033, roughly on par with the average for all occupations, according to the BLS.
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