Paying the Piper

For many actors getting the job is hard enough. An uphill struggle to get into the audition room, get oneself noticed, and be the winning choice. No wonder then that after such a battle, the thought of when one might actually get paid can be the last thing on your mind.

A theatre job might bring a pay cheque a week or 10 days after the work has been done. An agent gets the bank payment on payday and then processes it so that it arrives in the bank account of the needy actor the following week. All fine and this does have the added bonus that when you actually finish the job you still have one pay packet to come.

But what about the one-off job? The one day's filming, the commercial, or the voice-over? The corporate role-play day or the day’s work in promotions? What's a reasonable amount of time to expect to wait for payment on those occasions?

If you're dealing with the work yourself, work such as a role-play agency or a promotions agency, then it's best to check payment terms at the time of booking. Most reasonable companies will say that it is 30 days from production of invoice, or date of the job. Increasingly, because the company doesn't want to pay you until they've had the money in from the client, payment terms have increased to 60 days. It will help you budget if you know upfront. As someone who has spent most of his lifetime spending fee before it ever arrived in my bank account, it's good to know when you can actually expect the money. Last week, second week of July, I received a role-play payment for a job done during the last week of April. Not an enormous fee to begin with, and reduced in value by the very fact of having to wait just over two months to receive it.

But that's nothing in comparison to the fee for a voice-over studio session that I did on February 23. I still haven't been paid. This is in the hands of my voice-over agent, and they have chased it. However, they have lots of other clients whose fees they also must chase, and whose work they must process, so they don't have the time necessary to continuously chase late fees. If this fee had been on work I had generated myself, by now the company would have had at least one solicitor's letter and some sharp tweets identifying them. Given that they have taken over four months to pay, it's not likely that I would rush to work for them again.

I remember once being responsible for the fees of eight other actors who had worked for me on a corporate gig in France. The company, who had promised payment within 14 days, still hadn't paid out after 6 weeks. Phone calls and emails produced assurances that payment was on its way. "The cheque is in the post" is among the three greatest lies in the world, along with "I love you" and a reference to oral sex that I couldn't possibly mention here. After a Friday morning phone call produced no results seven weeks after the job, I went over to their offices south of the river. On enquiry at reception, I was told there was nobody in the building who could process a cheque. I sat down in reception and pulled a notice out of my bag on a large sheet of A3 paper. "This company hasn't paid me" it said in the boldest felt tip marker that I possessed.

Funnily enough they did pay me. Within about 10 minutes of me holding up the notice in the reception area.

So that's the most drastic sort of action, but it is all a question of just how much you are prepared for people to trample over you. If a company takes a long time to pay you now, they will do it again, and probably take longer next time. Just how much worth has one day’s work next week if you won't be paid until November.

Sometimes these people are taking advantage of the actor’s passion and desire to work. What we should pull to the fore on occasions like this is our business sense. Acting is our business. And it's not good business sense to let people delay their payments to you. You're paying interest on your overdraft. You're the one who can't make that trip to Poundland to spend your fee.

So, when you accept the job, check what the payment terms are. Make yourself familiar with the Equity guidelines for payment on theatre and television work. Put a note in your diary as to when you expect the money, and on that day, do something about it.

You did the job. You earned the money. Make sure you get it on time.