I wonder if actors from the 2010's can get rich thanks to their soap gig. Scott Clifton for example is in almost every B&B episode: in the 80's or 90's he would have been a millionaire, but what about today?
Back in better times, the actors would sign contracts that guaranteed a certain pay rate per episode, and a guarantee of a certain number of episodes/appearances per week. So Average Actor X might get $2500 per episode, and have a two episode-per-week guarantee, earning roughly $250,000. But if the actor is in a hot story and they write him/her into more than two episodes per week (which used to happen a lot more back then), they would get paid an extra $2500 for every episode over their guarantee. They might end up with a lot of extra pay if their character catches on. If the character didn't really catch fire, they'd still be guaranteed to be paid for those two episodes per week, even if they only appeared once a week or less. The pay rates would be renegotiated when the contract comes up for renewal.
These days, as they hustle to pinch every penny and save production costs, I'm not sure this 'guarantee' model is used as much, if at all. It appears that actors are now only paid for episodes in which they appear, or in some cases get paid for "days of work" even if all the scenes filmed in that one day are dropped into multiple episodes. The soaps rely much more on off-contract actors--those who work when the show needs them, but don't have any guarantee that the show will use them.
I'm sure the contract details depend largely on how good the actor's agent is; nothing seems set in stone these days. Actors have publicly criticized their shows and even quit over attempts by the producers to reduce their per-episode rate or trying to "lower their guarantee" in contract negotiations (basically cutting their salaries). During Mal Young's stormy tenure on Y&R they lost several veteran actors to his refusal to give raises of any sort to anyone in the cast--even actors who had taken cuts for several consecutive years.
In the case of B&B, I'm sure actors like Scott Clifton don't get the per-episode rate of someone like Katherine Kelly Lang, but the frequency of his appearances make me think that he might not be that much behind her in yearly earnings. It all tends to balance out, however, because younger actors will never make as much as the veterans make now, even after the veterans' salary reductions. Longevity is no longer rewarded the way it was.
Oh, and Matthew Atkinson.
