TV guest stars not in it for the money

By Rebecca Ascher-Walsh

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - It wasn't the lure of a big paycheck that seduced an Oscar-nominated actress like Amy Ryan, who this season took a guest-starring turn on NBC's "The Office."

Nor was it the money that drew Eric Stoltz, who played a shackled serial killer on ABC's "Grey's Anatomy." Or Meat Loaf, who took to his bed in agonizing death throes on Fox's "House."

With a standard guild rate of about $6,000 a part, along with the anxiety that comes from bonding with an already-established cast and the surety that there's no future to it, why would any well-known actor agree to be a guest star on a series?

"I spent a week rehearsing staged readings at a Jewish community center where the amount of pay is bupkis," says Ed Asner, who guest-starred on CBS' "CSI: NY." "If I'm willing to do that for a nice piece of writing, I'm certainly willing to do it for a TV script that knocks your socks off."

While one producer says Sigourney Weaver and Katie Holmes were paid as much as $75,000 for guest turns on ABC's "Eli Stone," networks have slashed budgets and guest-star salaries along with them.

"The money has been going down for a while, but they still have to fight for me," Asner says.

Along with a general tightening of Hollywood budgets, there's scant evidence that guest stars bump ratings as they once did, a factor in the lower pay the stars are earning.

"It's happened in the last year or so, when ratings are down anyway," says "Ugly Betty" (ABC) co-executive producer Tracy Poust, "but people don't seem to be watching TV the way they used to, when they'd see that Tom Hanks was going to be on 'Ugly Betty' and tune in for that reason."

Adds Vince Gilligan, creator of AMC's "Breaking Bad": "We haven't noticed a bump in the ratings, but that's just fine. We do the show for our enjoyment as much as anyone else's."

So without tons of money, guest stars are opting for material they love.

Like Asner, Ryan chose to appear on "The Office" after receiving an Oscar nomination for playing a struggling single mother in "Gone Baby Gone," just to expand her acting possibilities.

"A lot of the scripts I was getting were similar to the character I played in the movie," she remembers. "I said to my manager and agent, 'I have to put on a dress and comb my hair and laugh.'"

That there was little risk involved made it all the more seductive, she says. "It's easy to join a party when it's already in full swing. With a feature, you can only hope it will be great."

Adds writer-director-actor Bob Odenkirk, who starred this season on "Breaking Bad," "Someone else is setting up the parameters of the game, and all you have to do is play as hard as you can. When you're writing and directing, there are more variables."

And with television, one known is the audience. "You can make a feature that makes millions but only so many people see it," says Elisha Cuthbert, an original star on Fox's "24" who left five years ago and returned as a guest star this season. "With a hit TV show, every week you'll have 16 million-20 million people watching you."