17 Actors Who Opened Up About Struggling With Fame And Finances In Hollywood
There’s truth behind the saying, “All that glitters isn’t gold,” and that’s definitely the case when it comes to Hollywood fame.
Here are stories from celebrities who love their careers, but don’t always enjoy the things that come because of it:
“My entry level lasted about 15 years, and we’re talking about being able to see a doctor, getting sick, getting a surgery, paying my rent,” Pedro told Entertainment Tonight in 2024. “I had less than $7 in my account, and a residual from Buffy the Vampire Slayer showed up and saved the day, and literally the reason I was able to stay in it and not give up.”
“People are like, ‘We need Season 3!’ and I’m like, ‘Bitch, I need Season 3!’” she said before candidly giving some insight into her financial situation as a result of the show’s hiatus. “I haven’t paid my rent in six months, and Zendaya’s over in Paris at Fashion Week, and I’m like, ‘Bitch, come home! I need you!’”
“In 2011, after the first Captain America (Captain America: The First Avenger) came out, about a month later, I had a call from my business manager telling me I had a month left to figure out how I was going to pay my rent. So, perception is always interesting, isn’t it? Nobody ever knows what the fuck is really happening.”
“I have taken the disappointments, the rejections, etc., and maintained that rejection is redirection. I have had continual FAITH in the Universe, but today, something broke. I feel cast aside. I’ve given my life to acting for over 30 years and am done struggling to survive.”
“I’m still struggling to make a living,” the A Quiet Place: Day One star said. “I’ve been in the filmmaking business for over two decades with two Oscar nominations and many blockbuster films, and yet, I’m still struggling financially. I’m definitely underpaid.”
“I hear people go, ‘You work a lot.’ I have to,” Taraji told Sirius XM in 2023. “The math ain’t mathing. And when you start working a lot, you know, you have a team. Big bills come with what we do. We don’t do this alone. The fact that we’re up here, it’s a whole entire team behind us. They have to get paid.”
“The phone does stop ringing in your career, and you start asking yourself why,” Brendan told GQ in 2018. “There’s many reasons, but was this one of them? I think it was.” And that, he says, is why he ultimately disappeared for a while. “I bought into the pressure that comes with the hopes and aims that come with a professional life that’s being molded and shaped and guided and managed. I just felt I couldn’t be a part of it. I didn’t feel that I belonged.”
“It was my first job in America,” Rebel said on the Diary of a CEO podcast in 2024. “I mean, it was very lucky to get it…but to be paid that little. Basically, that $3,500 [that I was paid for the film] I then had to pay to the union to join the union. So, I basically made no money. I lost money, because I had to pay to go to the premiere, like to buy my dress and everything. So, I lost money doing Bridesmaids.”
“I remember telling my dad, ‘The joy of [acting] is gone. I don’t enjoy it anymore. It’s not something I want to do.’ And he [was] like, ‘You’ve gone this far, why don’t you just wait it out a month?’ And I was like, ‘OK, fine.’ I was ready to quit that day and then just about a month later is when I got the show.”
“No, I was unemployed and felt like ass. You have to be so grateful in the moments when it’s painful and you get told no. Rejection sucks, I’m still dealing with it. But the rejections make the good times so much better.”
“So, I probably quit like six times during the course of it all,” Mark said on Hot Ones about the moments he wanted to give up on acting. “The closest was — my dad was part of a construction painting company. I went to Wisconsin, and I walked on a job site, and I saw some guys sandblasting. These dudes work!”
“If I’m not acting, I’m not sure who I am. And since it’s been so long since I’ve really gotten to do it, I’m struggling a little bit with how to maintain my self-worth, my sense of my own value. I haven’t had an acting job since, and that’s been really hard for me. So even before COVID kind of flipped the world on its head, I was struggling with this.”
“There is an awareness that I really struggled with, particularly in my late teens,” Daniel said on an episode of Off Camera with Sam Jones in 2019. “When I was going out to places for the first time where you would feel…again it could have largely been in my head but…you would feel watched when you went into a bar, when you went into a pub. Then, in my case, the quickest way of forgetting about the fact that you were being watched was to get very drunk and then as you get very drunk, you become aware that, oh people are watching more now because now I’m getting very drunk, so I should probably drink more to ignore that more.”
“There’s just all this stuff you learn along the way, like, when you get those death threats,” Margot told the Hollywood Reporter in 2018. “It’s [smart] to have a security team do a background check on whoever sent them to see if there is any past history of violence, because you’ll need to know whether you need security to go to certain events. And every time you do a background check, it’s going to cost $2,000, so take that into consideration when you’re getting yourself into this.”
“I was really apprehensive about taking the role initially,” Chris told GQ in 2023 about joining the Marvel Cinematic Universe as Captain America. “I remember in my late 20s having a real shift in how I felt on set, how I felt promoting films: a little more anxiety, a little more uncertainty. You always end up questioning, Is this what I should be doing? I just wasn’t sure if I was moving closer to myself or further away.”
“I signed with Disney Channel when I got Camp Rock,” Demi told Allure in 2016. “And I had a gap between my two front teeth. They were like, ‘Would you be willing to fix it?’ I wish today that I hadn’t, because my gap was really cute.”
“When we talk about child stars going nuts, what we’re not actually talking about is how fame is a trauma,” Cole told the New York Times in 2022 per Teen Vogue. “I’m violently defensive against people who mock some of the young women who were on the channel when I was younger because I don’t feel like it adequately comprehends the humanity of that experience and what it takes to recover.”
Are there other examples that come to mind of celebrities who’ve been bravely opened up about the perils of fame? Let us know in the comments or anonymous form below.
