Lord of the Rings was a box office hit during its 2000s run, but the success didn't amount to much financially for Cate Blanchett.
The actress was a guest on a new episode of Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen alongside her Borderlands co-star Gina Gershon when they were put in the hot seat for 'Plead the Fifth.'
Cohen asked Blanchett which film gave her "the biggest paycheck." The Australian native asked Cohen to guess, to which he answered Lord of the Rings, baffling Blanchett.
"Are you kidding me?" she asked. "No one got paid anything to do that movie."
On whether Blanchett got paid "a piece of the backend," meaning a percentage of the film's profits in addition to salary, she denied it, adding, "That was way before any of that."
In working with director Peter Jackson, Blanchett said that she simply wanted "to work with the guy who made 'Brain Dead,'" and joked that on the LOTR set, she "got free sandwiches" and got to keep her "[elf] ears." In the franchise, Blanchett played royal elf Galadriel, reprising the role in the 2010s trilogy, The Hobbit.
"Women don't get paid as much as you think they do," she concluded.
Blanchett makes the latest LOTR castmate to express how little they were paid, following Orlando Bloom, who claimed that he was paid $175,000 total for the films.
"Greatest gift of my life," Bloom, who played Legolas, said about the franchise on the Howard Stern Show last April. "It's like, you can do it again for half the money.