Despite taking home the Best Supporting Actress award at the Oscars, Patricia Arquette was unsatisfied with the salary she received in Richard Linklater’s 2014 film Boyhood. The actress has expressed her desire for wage equality in her acceptance speech.
The coming-of-age film was provided a budget of $4 million, but since its release, it has grossed over $57 million globally. Interestingly, Boyhood is the first movie to be made in over 12 years, filming the same cast as they grow old.
Patricia Arquette Laments Her Stingy Salary In Boyhood
Patricia Arquette remains bitter about the measly pay she made in Boyhood. She revealed to WENN via Business Insider that it was more of a passion project than a high-paying job. The actress ranted:
“It’s important to me as an actor to be able to make a living, but I’m going to tell you something — I paid more money to my babysitter and my dog walker than I made on ‘Boyhood,’ and to be in ‘Boyhood!’”
The filming began in 2002, and Arquette and her co-stars had to shoot for one week a year for over 12 years. She compared working on movies with television shows, and she clearly favored the latter:
“Television actually allows you to make a living, feed your children, send them to college. And to have the luxury to make the choices of doing what it is you think that matters.”
The True Romance star also admitted that she did not expect the movie to become so well-received, and for it to earn several accolades, including Best Picture nomination, truly astonished her. She added:
“It blows my mind [we won] because we didn’t even know if people would even accept this movie and then to find that people were moved by the movie. Winning totally blew our minds.”
Still, she was happy for director Richard Linklater’s accomplishment and remarked how the studio and producers “gambled on a movie with no safety net.” Arquette commented that they could have ended up with nothing.
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Patricia Arquette Praises Television For Its Accessibility
As Patricia Arquette singled out television as her choice of platform, she regarded the film industry as “snobby.” She told the New York Times:
“The idea of network TV is you could entertain old people at home, people living in a trailer court, people who don’t have money to go to movies and get a babysitter. There’s something very snobby about the way the film and theater community used to look at television. I love small weird art movies, and I love free mass entertainment.”
The actress further noted in her interview that she wants to work as she pleases and would not let society dictate what she needs to do.
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