She’d Earned $5 Million By Age 30 (But…)

Ever heard of Adelaide Kane?

She’s an 🇦🇺 Australian actress probably best known for playing Mary, Queen of Scots in a show called Reign.

Here she is in a 1-minute video revealing how much she has earned and spent over the years.

Apparently she got paid about $20,000 an episode for Reign. Having starred in 78 episodes, that works out to…

$1.56 million for four years of work… assuming that I’ve made $5 million in my entire career since I started working at 16, here is how that breaks down…

• 10% goes to her agent
• 10% goes to her manager
• 5% goes to her lawyer
• 5% goes to her business manager
• 30% goes to taxes

That leaves her with about $2.2 million over the last 14 years…

Which if you average it out comes down to $178,000-ish a year which would be fine, a good wage. Except I have to pay rent in major cities, sometimes two cities at once.

I have to pay a publicist, which is usually $2000 to $3000 a month. When I’ve had social media teams that’s been around $2000 a month. Stylists run anywhere from $700 to $1500 an outfit, and hair and makeup is about $1000 [a month].

Even with all those expenses she’s still earning a good living, but nowhere near as good as “$20,000 an episode” would lead you to believe.

This is also common with VC startups: some get acquired for $100’s of millions and it’s easy to assume that the founders end up super rich. But often they only own a small percentage of the company by the time it sells 😕

Back to Adelaide Kane, and apparently she had a follow-up video where she said…

Every actor I know saves as much as humanly possible, because most of us go for months or sometimes years at a time between jobs.

And we do get residuals, but… So, I’m fine, but my savings won’t last forever, do you know what I mean?

Adelaide has built up her own media empire online over the years…

• Instagram: 2.1M followers
• TikTok: 1.3M followers
• Twitter: 319K followers
• YouTube: 275K subscribers

Pretty smart way to mitigate the ups and downs of an acting career. 

With that kind of following she could earn a good living from ads and sponsorships if needed 😎