Succession‘s Alan Ruck reveals his paltry Ferris Bueller salary on Jimmy Kimmel Live
35 years later, the actor also reassures fans that that Ferrari was a piece of junk
TV News Jimmy Kimmel
With his Succession character, the perpetually overlooked failson Connor Roy, planning a run for the fictional presidency on the HBO series, Alan Ruck explained why a Roy in the White House isn’t so ridiculous after all. Yes, even the singularly unexceptional Connor. Describing Connor as “an obscenely wealthy person with no leadership ability and no experience,” Ruck told Jimmy Kimmel on Monday, “Its America, we can do anything.”
And while Kimmel prodded Ruck to compare the uniformly despicable Roys to the Trumps (what with the obscene wealth, and the shadiness, and the ready supply of scheming, worthless progeny), it’s another wretchedly plutocratic dynasty the actor said more closely resembles the media mogul Roys. Noting how costar and terrifyingly imperious Roy family patriarch Brian Cox ran into one of the News Corp-owning Murdochs at Starbucks recently (only for the real-life right-wing Fox News purveyor to quietly nod and smile), Ruck stated that word around the Succession set is that the Murdochs are well aware of the parallels. (To be fair to whichever Murdoch that was, it’s hard to imagine anybody stepping to Brian Cox.)
Saying of the widely acclaimed Succession, “I’ve been waiting for this for 30 years,” Ruck happily also fielded Kimmel’s inevitable questions about a different particular role from 35 years ago. Relating an anecdote about getting to drive a press van in a presidential motorcade recently (which is something actors get to do, apparently), Ruck told Kimmel about his usual method for dealing with people who sort-of but not-quite recognize him, especially when he’s responsibly wearing a face mask in public. Told he sounds like that guy from Ferris Bueller, Ruck’s cagey response is to ask, “Oh, is he any good?” and then go from there, which sounds about right, considering the actor’s long career of playing overlooked but scene-stealing second bananas.
Along those lines, Ruck revealed that he was only paid 40 grand for his indelible turn as endearingly tortured teen Cameron Frye in 1986's Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, a sum of which the now 65-year-old actor says ruefully, “They’re gonna find any excuse not to pay you.” Presumably flush with HBO cash and long-overdue recognition for his role as the least-likely Roy to ascend to POTUS on Succession, Ruck also explained how Bueller fans are always much more concerned about that doomed vehicle than about how Cameron is going to cope with his coming, explosive confrontation with his neglectful father.
“They’re really worried about the car,” Ruck noted of his interactions with the legions of Ferris Bueller viewers in his life, with the actor revealing the cold-comfort fact that that legendary onscreen Ferrari GT California was, in fact, “crap.” Telling Kimmel that the kit car Cameron infamously sent hurtling through a glass wall and into a ravine was actually a Mustang body with a shiny outer replica Ferrari shell, Ruck remembered the crew cheering when the balky and unreliable machine finally met its end. “We couldn’t afford a real Ferrari,” said Ruck of the modestly budgeted John Hughes film. No word on whether the car cost more than Ruck’s salary as Cameron, but it’s probably pretty close.
107 Comments
I imagine he’s made far more than 40k from residuals over the years. Glad he’s getting some accolades now though…he’s fantastic in this show, and in most things that he’s done.
40k is decent but actors can go a long time between big jobs if you’re not on the a-list. You should listen to his interview on Maron. He was unemployed for years after that movie. He had to work in a warehouse in Downtown LA with gang members and couldn’t find acting jobs. At one point in his life he almost died of a blood infection.
This often blows my mind…especially when you look at the people who are never out of work
I remember reading about that warehouse job he had, someone recognized him from Ferris Bueller, but he told him that it wasn’t him, and he gets that a lot. The guy came in one day and said that he checked the box, and the actor had the same name as him, he just said that was weird, lol.
He wasn’t dying. He just couldn’t think of anything good to do.
doubt they got residuals back then especially on a small budget movie like this.
My mother-in-law had very small parts in a couple of well known movies back in the 70s which and still gets residuals from them. We tease her whenever one of the movies plays at a theatre about whether or not the residual will cover the cost of a ticket.Odds are incredibly strong you’ve seen her and no, I’m not going to say what movies she was in.
Bit part tease.
I’ve been called much worse.
They did. Don’t confuse residuals with royalties or points.
This isn’t my area of expertise, but I don’t think residuals are a thing for non-famous movie actors. Especially not from that time period.
Residuals are a thing for even non-famous actors, provided you are a union member working on a union project. The residuals on a 40k pay check may not be huge but he’s probably still getting checks from time to time.Residuals Tavern used to have a deal (maybe they still do) where they gave you a free drink if you brought in a residual check for less than $1. I had a teacher who would take us out for free drinks because he was still getting checks for about $0.80 from the Rockford Files.
Yeah, I read somewhere that the kid that played Alexander on one episode of TNG is still getting residual checks. One episode and no one really heard from that kid again but still the checks happen.
Buddy of mine still periodically gets checks ranging from a few hundred to over $10k for a screenplay he wrote for a movie that came out in 2004 because it’s randomly running in Europe or southeast Asia or airing on HBO for a couple months.
“This is Jim Rockford, at the tone leave your name and message – I’ll get back to you.”“Jim, we’re down at Residuals and I’ve got a thick stack of residual checks ready to drink – get down here! Oh, wait…Candace says to say “hey”Dun duh duh Duh!
I’ve seen Dietrich Bader share residual invoices for about a combined 3 cents for writing.
Yeah I know people who are in SAG and only do extra work. The kinda people who have a line, or are clearly visible in the background. Even they get residuals. Now “Hollywood Accounting” is mostly about not paying that out, but there are residuals. And $40k in 1986 is over $100k in today money. It’s not neccisarily a fair share given how well the film has done. But most working actors can’t hope to clear that in a year. None the less off 3 months of work. Including apparently Ruck in the years after.
Residuals are a thing for anyone with a SAG card. My mom had one line in an 80s movie and got (albeit tiny) residuals checks for years afterward.
They are. I had a friend in college that had a really small part in an unsuccessful movie in the 80s, and he’s still getting residual checks today. Granted, they’re generally less than a dollar now, but I imagine a movie that got played and replayed like Ferris did would rack up some decent money.
Huh, the more you know. It seems like it must be an enormous pain in the ass to track down the guy who had a one-word part in 1972’s 23rd most popular movie, but I guess that’s what accounting departments are for.
Studios and the unions each have huge teams of accountants and administrators to manage the residuals process. SAG has full time employees whose only job is to maintain contact info for payees and track down missing people. Studios are obligated to submit payments to unions whether or not the beneficiary can be tracked down. The unions are trustees of undisbursed residual funds.
They certainly are. All actors get them, even bit roles.
Residuals are for all actors with speaking roles in all major films produced under union rules, and have been since the 70s.
Residuals aren’t always a thing, though.
If it’s a union production, it is always a thing.
Isn’t 40k a lot? For that time? That sounds very generous to me.
With inflation that’d be about 95.6k today.
I’d love that for a couple of weeks of work.
Get good at something, then.
I am. I’m good at expecting Alan Ruck to not get paid enough.
I got minimum wage for background on a made for tv western, but I did sneak a sandwich for lunch.
Gonna be more than that soon…
Imagine being integral to something that made millions of dollars upon release and perennially over its lifespan and being paid $40K. He has a right to be rueful about it. Good for him that all these years later he’s being rewarded.
I don’t even make that much a year. Its a lot to me.
Yeah, but then he was out of work for years. That money isn’t so great when you have to stretch it.
“Yeah, but then he was out of work for years.”
So? What does that have to do with the price of bread?
If you won a million dollars and spent it, would you try to pretend that a million dollars is nothing?
I don’t know…it’s an 80s John Hughes teen rom-com flick. $40k in 80’s dollars for 2.5 months of work for an unknown actor is a pretty good deal, especially considering that they were meant to be relatively cheaply made, with a total budget of $5 million dollars. Especially back then, no one really expected a movie like that to have some sort of everlasting legacy.
I don’t think he’s actually rueful and it was a very solid payday for its time. It sucks that he wasn’t able to find work afterwards, but that’s not really anyone’s fault.
Considering he was excellent in the movie and it was a hit, I’d say it’s the fault of every Hollywood casting director.
Fair!
Excuse me, you have every artist and writer who has worked in the comics industry on line 2. Do you want me to take a message?
I’d say not a lot for a Hughes movie, he was huge by that point, but not necessarily unreasonable for a first-timer. From the other comments it sounds like it didn’t launch him to immediate stardom, but it sure got him noticed by audiences.
It is a good paycheck, but the thing is, acting is freelance work and you’ve got to make it last. After the agent cut and taxes, it’s a chunk smaller, and you’ve got to hustle for more, and then you have to be ready for not getting work for months or a year or years. In the meantime, your auditioning, which isn’t much like trying out like much else given how subjective and you can be rejected—or just not picked—for any old reason. Even a successful acting career sounds like it’s designed to maximize stress.
It’s decent, but the movie made $140 million at the box office in those same 80s dollars, and his performance was a significant part of that.
It does sound like a lot but it’s not like they just handed him a 40k check. I assume he had to pay taxes on it and had to give a cut to a manager or agent.
Reading this and the responses here, it doesn’t sound like it is as generous as I thought it was, but its still an amount I would be happy to receive for a few weeks making a film.
100% agreed
Right?! The most shocking thing in this article was the revelation that Alan Ruck is 65 goddamn years old. Holy hell.
And Brian Cox is only ten years his senior, but has felt like he’s been in his sixties for at least 30 years.
I believe Brian Cox was only 39 when he played Hannibal “Lecktor” in Manhunter. As was John Hurt as Kane in Alien and Ian McDiarmid for Palpatine the first time.
Absolutely. He felt like he was in his 60s, or at least his 50s, in Manhunter.
I assume the scene where Cameron pretends to be a hoity-toity old guy on the phone was just Ruck speaking in his regular voice.
Alan Ruck? The sausage king of Chicago?
Friend to the Sausage King of Chicago.
No, he was Sgt. Peterson, Chicago Police.
He’s about 6 years older than Matthew Broderick who was himself 23 when they filmed. Mia Sara was 18.
He also has my favorite line in Speed:Keanu: “FUCK ME!”Ruck: “… oh darn.”
If I ever ran into Alan Ruck, I think I’d ask him “hey man, aren’t you the guy from Speed?”.
“Hey, it’s the captain of the Enterprise-B!”
If he had only insisted on going himself, Kirk would still be with us today!
“How did it feel when Kirk called you a snowflake and stole your chair?”
“Aren’t you that guy from Justified?”(He was awesome in Justified first season episode Long in the Tooth. That was the episode I knew that show was gonna be great).
It was a terrific episode and a good example of why a great series doesn’t have to be 100% serialized all the time. Justified, in its first season, was about 50% standalone episodes and was better for it.
Since they pretty much went to about 85% serialized starting by the end of season 1 I wouldn’t call it a great example.
The episode IS a great example. It was a great episode and an example of why non-serialization still results in great TV.
It was a good episode but some of the others weren’t the show became great when they decided to stick to one main story.
Saaaaame
I’d probably just ask him what Richard Kind was like on the set of Spin City.
Every time I remember that Richard Kind is best friends with George Clooney (as well as a victim of several of Clooney’s pranks) I’m surprised all over again.
That’s how it is for me when I read about Bob Newhart and Don Rickles being best friends.
So is Rickles or Newhart Richard Kind in your mind?
That’s kind of a stumper. I was thinking of Rickles as Clooney.
That one actually makes sense to me.
I think we all know that the answer to that is “delightful.”
This is the most correct answer.
“You were fantastic as Edmure Tully!”
In all seriousness, someone interviewed all the actors who played passengers on the bus in Speed that they could find (including Alan Ruck) and it’s a great read.https://uproxx.com/movies/speed-20th-anniversary-meet-the-passengers-of-bus-2525/
“Hey, it’s Rabbit from Twister!”
My brother once met R Lee Ermey at some conference he was at for work. Everyone was going up to him saying they loved him in Full Metal Jacket, but my brother goes up and says he loved him in Saving Silverman. R Lee loved it.
I already seen to the airport
I thought he was the guy from “Twister?”“Roll the maps!”
He gets to be canonically one of the captains of the USS Enterprise; that’s not too bad. (It was the least remarkable one and he was a squirrely paper-pusher who was only there to show how great Kirk was—another of those second banana roles—but still.)
With 3-4 Succession articles on the AVC per day, you’d think it would be impossible for me to avoid the knowledge that Alan Ruck is on the show.
I spotted him in the background of a few stills, which it sounds like is about what his role entails, but no specific mention.
I am amused that anyone can pretend there are limits to who can be President now. The 1/6 Shaman could legitimately run in a post/intra-Trump world, and perhaps win.
I might actually prefer him to another Trump term, at least he stopped some of his fellow traitors from stealing some muffins out of one of the Capitol break rooms.
Less likely to cropdust the White House for 4 years too.
Probably only because they weren’t organic.
Success, and married to the immensely talented Mireille Enos. Lucky fucking guy.
why do people act like Succession being based on the Murdochs is some kind of revelation when Jesse Armstrong’s original feature script (then changed to a series) was called MURDOCH???
Because people don’t know things
Why do people assume that everyone knows an obscure fact that they know?
I heard Succession is another version of Arrested Development.
Hmm, probably a wise edit there.
It’s pretty well known the kit cars used in the movie were terrible, but who cares, it’s still one of the stars of the movie in my eyes.IIRC, they used a real one for closeups, but all the driving scenes were done with replicas.
$40,000 in 1985 is basically $100,000 today. Not bad for, what, 2 months work for an actor with almost no credits?
He made the equivalent of $100,000 in today’s money. Not horrible for being an unknown actor.
Except that a) the movie was a huge hit, b) he was great in it, and c) it didn’t immediately lead to more work despite all that. I doubt he’d have any complaints if he’d have started fielding offers for new parts paying the same and more.
Presumably flush with HBO cash and long-overdue recognition for his role as the least-likely Roy to ascend to POTUS on SuccessionWhat? If anything, he’s the most likely out of that family to be POTUS. Rome’s a knucklehead, Shiv’s fake, Kenny’s screwy! #Conhead4evaI love Ruck’s Connor. Love how he seems to have been the one taking care of his brothers when they were kids, taking them camping and fishing. He was also the only one out of the others who seemingly came to Kendall’s birthday party last episode without any ulterior motives. The coat gag was golden.
Roman is an actual Nazi with a serious sexual harassment problem.
If you ask me that makes him the most realistic choice for a major GOP voice these days.
Wait, that’s not Brad from Rocky Horror? Then what the hell is Brad doing?
They supposedly paid Belushi 35-grand to be in “Animal House.” (This may have posted once already- I can’t tell! Sorry if I doubled up.)
he only made 40k and he didnt kill anyone during the press tour like broderick did. what a nice guy.
I’m pretty sure $40k in 1986, is like $60k now (or more). College kids with a BS rarely make that until they’ve been somewhere for a few years. So quit your bitching Alan.