Meryl Streep Made an Insane Amount of Money for 5 Minutes of Mamma Mia 2
Guess how much Meryl Streep made for her short appearance in the Mamma Mia! sequel. $3 million! Impressive? Here's how she came to that.
From year to year, the name of Meryl Streep comes up in lists of the highest-paid actors world-wide. Celebrity Net Worth pegs her current net worth at around $160 million. This is hardly surprising, considering the award-winning actress made a $3 million salary for a 5-minute appearance in Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again.
By the time box-office successful Mamma Mia! hit the screens in 2008, Meryl Streep's career was in full swing. In the musical, the actress plays a role of Donna, an owner of a beautiful Greek hotel and a mother of a young bride-to-be Sophie played by Amanda Seyfried who wants to meet a father she never knew. Turns out at the time of Sophie's conception Donna was seeing three different men played by Pierce Brosnan, Colin Firth, and Stellan Skarsgård. So Sophie invites them all to her wedding in hopes of finding who her real father is.
The movie musical is based on the 1999 stage show of the same name and is using the songs of ABBA. The film has become the fifth highest-grossing film of 2008 bringing in $611 million worldwide on a $52 million budget, so the sequel was a matter of time.
The main issue was how to bring the star cast back to their roles. Meryl Streep for instance is not the one to reprise a role. If she was, imagine how many sequels she would have to take part in. So it was only natural that her appearance in the Mamma Mia! sequel was more of a cameo.
Mamma Mia! producer Judy Craymer explained this in her interview with IndieWire saying Streep is "the most lauded actress" so "she doesn't do sequels."
Nevertheless, for her short cameo Streep received a $3 million salary according to Metro UK. By way of contrast, Seyfried has reportedly earned the same amount and Cher playing Donna's mother received $1 million for her participation in the sequel.
The $3 million salary comes as no surprise, since these days the accomplished actress receives up to $20 million for a role. However, Streep's income has not always been calculated in amounts with six zeros. At the beginning of her career, the actress made $35,000 for The Deer Hunter and $85,000 for Kramer vs. Kramer.