How Much Do Child Actors Make? Pros and Cons, Explained

If you're a parent of a child who shows an interest in acting as well as a bit of skill in that area, you may be wondering how to help them break into the acting business. Acting can be a fairly lucrative gig, of course, even for children, but talking about salary is important when it comes to negotiations. How much do child actors make?

Expecting your toddler to become an instant superstar might be pushing it a bit, but it's true that child actors can make a great living. The financial and time sacrifices required of parents, as well as the child's sacrifice of a normal childhood, can be a lot to handle. Is it worth the stress of sending your child out on auditions?

Child actor salaries can vary widely based on a number of factors. Whether a child has previous experience and has been well-received by the public will drive up their asking price. And child actors' salaries must also cover costs like agent fees, head shots, transportation, and more.

Remember that an average salary is affected by the ultra-high paychecks, like Millie Bobby Brown's reported $350,000 per episode paycheck by the latest season of Stranger Things. But just for an estimate, KidsCasting.com notes that for a 30–60 minute episode on a TV show, a child actor might earn about $1,000.

An estimate for weekly pay for a child actor is around $3,500. A daily rate of about $1,000 may be typical for a child appearing in TV commercials. KidsCasting also says that a Broadway actor might earn an average of $2,000 per week for their work on a live show. Of course, the pay for all actors is directly impacted by the overall budget for the ad, show, or film.

If you look at the average salary of all actors, regardless of age, it isn't that high. Most salary estimating resources put average actor salaries somewhere in the mid-five-figures range. ZipRecruiter says it's $68,929 per year on average, Glassdoor reports it at $54,777, and US News reports it at $46,960 (according to GoBankingRates).