Elijah Wood makes shocking confession about ‘Lord of the Rings’ salary

Elijah Wood has recently made shocking confession about his salary for Lord of the Rings.

Speaking to Business Insider at the 2025 Texas Film Awards, the actor, who played Frodo Baggins in the highest-grossing movies series, revealed that his pay was not “massive”.

“Because we weren’t making one movie and then renegotiating a contract for the next, it wasn’t the sort of lucrative scenario that you could sort of rest easy for the rest of your life,” said the 44-year-old.

Wood shared that director Peter Jackson and New Line Cinema “took a real gamble” shooting the Rings trilogy back-to-back.

The Bookworm actor opened up that he and his co-stars never got the opportunity to renegotiate salaries based on franchise’s box office success.

“The benefit of that was that we were also signing up for something that was going to be a part of our lives forever,” added Wood.

Earlier in a 2019 interview on The Howard Stern Show, Orlando Bloom, who played Legolas, disclosed he was paid just $175,000 for all three movies.

Sean Astin, who shared many scenes with Wood as Samwise Gamgee, later mentioned that he got about $250,000 for the movies.

When BI asked Wood if he made the same as Astin, to which the actor replied that the figure was not accurate and “it doesn’t matter” because the value “Rings” had his on his career and life is priceless.

However, the actor added, “It’s such an honour to have been a part of those films and they represent some of the best experiences of my life.”