Sylvester Stallone – venerable older megastar and allegedly worth £265m, is turning to appearing in TV advertising to add a few more pennies to his coffers. Well in his current marriage, he has a wife and three beautiful daughters to look after. Soon he is due to be the new face of British Bread Maker, Warburtons! This follows a trend amongst Hollywood’s ‘silvery-haired’ megastars to “take a step down” and appear in British TV Commercials. Why? Well they also like to tread the boards in London theatres, but being in TV ads seems to be a new attraction for big Hollywod names, which is lucrative and takes up very little time.
Campaign magazine’s deputy feature Editor James Swift commented that money is the most obvious reason. Financial rewards are figures to be balked at – like a payment of over a million UK pounds to Julia Roberts for a silent part for coffee giant Lavazza. This type of payment can be for less than two hours of filming. Sharon Osbourne, another less major star, has become the new face of MoneySuperMarket.
Some mellowed older stars apparently like the quirky scripts of adverts which make them laugh. Also the money is so incredibly easy for them, that who is to wonder why they get themselves out there on less weighty projects than feature films?
Big advertisements need more and more attractions to garner the interest of the viewer as more people than ever go out to make a cup of tea, do the washing-up, or turn the sound down when commercials come on which breaks up their viewing time.
Robert de Niro, Madonna, Leo DiCaprio and Keanu Reeves are amongst other major stars who have given themselves up at one time or another to be in commercials. It certainly does not seem to affect their bankability for other bigger projects.