Is there any guilt about making a movie just for the money?

I was channel surfing the other night and Idris Elba popped on the screen (better known as Stringer Bell from The Wire). He’s a good actor so I stopped surfing and brought up the name and info on the movie he was in: Obsessed.

As if the title wasn’t enough to tell me that the film was going to be garbage, the description, which all but admitted that the movie was a poor man’s knock-off of Fatal Attraction, left nothing to the imagination.

I enjoy train wrecks, so I rubbernecked the movie for about 30 minutes. The film’s mediocrity surpassed my expectations. The script, plot, dialogue, etc. were all just awful. I couldn’t help but wonder if Elba felt any kind of self-loathing about having taken a role in what he knew would be a terrible movie. He had starred in one of the greatest TV shows of all time – some would say the greatest. This movie was clearly below him. But he’s by no means the first person to accept a role just for the money – do actors ever feel guilty about doing this?

I remember years ago William H. Macy was asked this question regarding his role in Jurassic Park 3. His response was that movies like that allow him to star in David Mamet films that pay next to nothing – doing some movies purely for the money provides him with a great deal of artistic freedom. I suppose there’s some logic to that, but I don’t fully buy it.

If you are an actor – or any kind of artist – and you have chosen that career because of your commitment to the craft rather than a desire to be famous and make lots of money, I feel that there is something insincere about knowingly taking a role in a bad movie for the money. I’m not arguing that a great artist has to be a starving artist like the characters in Bullets Over Broadway claim, but when I think about my own non-arts career – my day job – I don’t seek jobs purely for the money.

While I want to make as much money as the next person, I still choose to work jobs that I have some kind of personal interest in. If I did a job purely for the money where I had no care for the work, I would hate having to show up for work every day no matter how well it pays. And I say this from some experience. Eventually you loath going to work so much that you become depressed. So that’s why I would think actors would feel the same way. And what should further complicate things for them, is their legacy

If I put myself in Elba’s shoes, I would view having stared in Obsessed as a major stain on my record. Movies don’t disappear – they last forever. Personally, I’d rather be a starving artist than have my name involved in a totally mediocre film. It’s just a matter of self-respect. The idea that the film could be playing on cable TV for anyone in the world to see horrifies me. I suppose that’s why I’ll never have a career in Hollywood.

Ultimately, all an actor has is their legacy. Eventually you die and all the money you earn is meaningless. Everyone wants to achieve immortality, and film does offer one of the best ways to accomplish that by so vividly preserving your likeness. But you only get to achieve immortality through good films. In the long run, the universe has an amazing ability to sort out the good from bad. If you end up doing too many movies purely for the money, the universe is going to spit you out. And I feel like this is happening to William H. Macy. It’s been years since he’s been in a Mamet film, and recently he’s been popping up in things like Wild Hogs.

From the outsider’s perspective, being a Hollywood actor seems like one of the best possible jobs. But I wonder if it is really total hell for some people. If your ambition is to do quality acting work, and all you have to show at the end of your life are a bunch of hackneyed movies that were made purely to line the pockets of shareholders, that strikes me as a pretty empty life.