Highlights
- Hollywood salaries far surpass Broadway earnings, according to Sofia Vergara, who earns millions per year.
- Stars like Julia Roberts and Hugh Jackman make hefty paychecks on Broadway, but still less than in Hollywood.
- Vergara nearly pursued a career in dentistry but opted against it, eventually finding success in Hollywood.
Sofia Vergara will not be walking the boards on Broadway anytime soon, if her word is to be believed.
There is a strong connection between the screen and the stage, with artists often overlapping across both worlds. Movie stars like James Earl Jones, Meryl Streep and Denzel Washington are also very familiar with the stage.
While these have made their mark as actors, other celebrities have also been known to dabble in theater as playwrights. Stephen King, John Mellencamp, Tom Waits and Steve Martin are all examples of stars who fall into this category.
At the same time, Sarah Jessica Parker and Anna Kendrick, among others, got their careers started on Broadway. Vergara took another path altogether, having never acted in a play professionally. She apparently isn’t interested in starting now, and her reason is completely hilarious.
Sofia Vergara Doesn’t Want To Work On Broadway Because “They Don’t Pay Enough”
Sofia Vergara will reportedly not work in the theater, simply because she believes “they don’t pay enough.” The Modern Family star made the claim when she appeared alongside Kevin Hart on The Graham Norton Show in early 2024.
The actress can literally afford to talk like that, considering she is said to enjoy a net worth of $180 million. When she started out on Modern Family, Vergara was earning somewhere in the range of $30,000-$60,000 per episode.
Before the start of the show’s fourth season, she received a raise that brought her salary up to about $150,000-$200,000 per episode. As part of her new contract, her salary would go up every season that Modern Family stayed on the air.
This consistent growth set her well the way to becoming the most well-paid actress on television, an accolade she would retain for seven straight years. According to Celebrity Net Worth, Vergara earned $10 million per year as a judge on America’s Got Talent, and is said to be able to earn $40 – $50 million from all her endeavors in a typical year.
Is Sofia Vergara Right About Broadway Salaries Compared To Hollywood?
Sofia Vergara said she would not work on Broadway because they cannot match what she earns in Hollywood. In the first place, it is important to note that the theater industry is not as open with their financial information as their film counterparts.
Richest Broadway Stars, per TheRichest.com
|
Actor |
Net Worth |
|---|---|
|
Lin-Manuel Miranda |
$80 million |
|
Angela Lansbury |
$70 million |
|
Bernadette Peters |
$40 million |
|
Julia Andrews |
$30 million |
Still, there is enough evidence to suggest that—as Vergara hilariously insisted—stage work does not pay as well as what she makes on the screen. A report from The Sun newspaper indicates that an average actor on Broadway may fetch around $2,439 per week.
The bigger star performers do rake in six-figure paychecks, but it still cannot compare to the muscle of Hollywood. Quoting figures from The Hollywood Reporter and Playbill, the feature reported on salaries of various major stars on Broadway.
Julia Roberts commanded $150,000 weekly for her stint in Three Days of Rain, while Matthew Broderick and Nathan Lane earned $100,000 apiece per week for The Producers. Hugh Jackman and Daniel Craig reportedly received a base salary of $40,000 weekly during A Steady Rain‘s run, supplemented by ticket sales percentages.
Sofia Vergara Nearly Took A Completely Different Career Path
Sofia Vergara has found so much wealth in Hollywood that she would reportedly not countenance working on Broadway. Yet, her life could have been completely different, had she persisted on a significantly different career path she had started on.
In an interview with Harry Connick Jr. on his talk show, the South American-born star revealed her initial aspirations to pursue a career in medicine. She disclosed, “I wanted to be a doctor, but four years ago in Colombia that wasn’t an option because you were thinking about getting married, having kids, and being a doctor takes so much time and years of studying. It’s difficult.”
She therefore opted against it, and subsequently redirected her ambitions towards dentistry. “The next best thing at that time for me was to be a dentist. So I went to dentist school. But I didn’t finish,” Vergara explained.
She spent two years in dental school, and never got to work on any real patients in that time, other than dead bodies. “The first year’s like medical school,” Vergara said. “You have to learn about the whole human body, [before] you go into the mouth.”
Source: NewsFinale
