Tom Felton Was Paid £14 million To Appear In Harry Potter For Just 31 Minutes
That's a pretty good hourly rate...
While there’s no doubting that Tom Felton made quite the impression with his performance as the eminently dislikable Draco Malfoy in the Harry Potter series, it turns out he was actually barely in it!
Yep, it’s been revealed that Harry Potter’s arch school-enemy, and embodiment of all things Slytherin had little more than half an hour of screen time - throughout the entire franchise!
Felton’s character had just 31 minutes and 45 seconds of screen time across all eight movies, which you won’t be surprised to learn is much lower than Daniel Radcliffe (539 minutes) Emma Watson (205 minutes) or Rupert Grint (211 minutes), but you may be shocked to discover is less than both Robbie Coltrane’s Hagrid - who managed to rack up 45 minutes and 45 seconds - and the Dark Lord himself, with Voldemort hitting 37 minutes and 15 seconds.
This means that while Felton featured in less than three percent of the overall series, he managed to walk away with a pretty decent pay cheque of £14 million. That's £451,613 per minute of screen time, which isn’t bad going at all.
Obviously let’s not forget that an actor’s job doesn’t simply boil down to screen time, with literally hundreds of hours spent in rehearsals, in makeup, doing multiple takes and just sitting round on set only for the vast majority of the footage you film to end up on the cutting room floor.
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Felton was just 13-years-old when Harry Potter and The Philosopher's Stone began filming, so it’s probably not surprising that the young actor may not have been completely sensible with his earnings.
Speaking to the Express, Felton has previously said that he spent a lot of his money on 'typical teenage stuff'.
"I bought a lot of rubbish things that kids buy: skateboards and clothes and typical teenage stuff. And, as soon as I could, I wasted a lot of money on cars - BMWs mostly - for myself and my family," he explained.
"My mum told me: 'You have worked hard for it so get what you want, but beware, you will lose money on cars'. And she was right."
Felton is even ended up getting in trouble with the taxman after splashing his cash, and at one point even had 'the bailiff at the door’, however with the help of a good accountant he has since managed to get a grip on his finances!
He said: "My parents did what they could, but when money is thrust upon you so are a load of other things: tax, VAT, mortgages - things a 16-year-old really doesn't know anything about. I got myself into a bit of trouble.
"There was a scary two years where it was madness because I was really in trouble with the taxman. I had been working for eight years and all I had to show for it was this horrible debt. At one point we had the bailiff at the door.
“I managed to get out of that situation but it was a scary time, the result of too long burying my head in the sand. I've spent the past year and a half with an accountant, trying to understand VAT, DVD residuals and things like that. I've had to really grow up."
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