My wife and I are big fans of Charlie's Angels and Knight Rider. We were wondering if actors like John Forsythe-Charlie and William Daniels -KITT get paid for their voice only work given that they are uncredite And why do actors do uncredited work anyway?
Good question. For fun. For less money than they care to acknowledge. As a favor to the director/producer. etc. google. Forsythe appears to have used all three reasons.
Did you bother to read any of the links I posted, Dayton? It seems you're not really interested in the answer. edited to add: Whether they have to be a union member and paid scale, depends on if the film is being made in a right-to-work state or not. Scale isn't a lot (compared to top billed performers); currently a background actor is required to be paid $150 per day. If this is a non-union movie in a right to work state, a SAG member may face penalties from the union if they choose to work for less than scale. A famous actor is going to be a member of SAG, and will be paid at least scale for appearing in an uncredited part. Scale varies a lot from extras (background actors) to performers. While scale for an extra is $150/day a regular performer is around $900/day. Long term rates for performers (20 weeks or more) scale is about $3,000/week (that's about $150,000/year). John Forsythe may only have made $2,000/episode (today's rates) for voicing Charlie. background performer rates theatrical rates
Forsythe got $40,000/episode for the series and $5,000,000 to do the Charlie's Angels movies, according to IMDB. Terrific actor, great voice.
I remember reading about Knight Rider. William Daniels said he never even met David Hasselhoff or the rest of the cast. Someone just showed up every week on the set of St. Elsewhere his hospital show with a tape recorder and KITTs lines for him to read into it. Amazes me how effective his voice was nevertheless.
