A right royalty battle: Why some actors get repeatedly shafted
At 23, she starred as an animal pelt-wearing hunter named Presta, opposite the fourth doctor, Tom Baker. Last year, the BBC estimated the show made £100 million annually in licensing, merchandising deals and broadcast sales. However, Waterhouse is a rarity; back then, 'residuals' weren't common for actors.
From 1968 to 1970, Sydney actor Tony Bonner, now 81, played the dashing helicopter pilot Jerry King on Skippy, another hugely successful TV series that screened in more than 100 countries. Bonner launched an ambitious court case in 2008 for a share of royalties, suing the production company, Fauna, for $750,000 in the NSW Supreme Court. But Bonner's claim failed after Justice Ian Gzell found Bonner had been paid $140 a week in accordance with his contract and was not entitled to any further share of Skippy 's profits, having assigned all rights to Fauna. 'While my case wasn't a success, I do feel it helped other actors coming through,' Bonner tells me. 'Knowledge is power.'
TV historian Andrew Mercado says up until the 1980s, only a few actors 'had the foresight to demand a contract that would pay them for repeats past the initial two runs … they didn't think of VHS and box sets, let alone streaming.'
In 2017, Rowena Wallace, once one of the highest-paid actors in the country for her role as 'Pat the rat' in the '80s soap Sons and Daughters, revealed on national TV that she was so poor she couldn't feed herself after paying for her pet's dog food. Her co-star, the late Leila Hayes, waged a lengthy but unsuccessful battle with the show's producer, the late multimillionaire media mogul Reg Grundy, over residuals.
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In 2013, Colette Mann, who played inmate Doreen in Grundy's Prisoner and was also the actors' union rep on set, revealed she went to court to get a residuals deal for the cast, which only came into effect after Prisoner had ended; it resulted in modest payments. But Val Lehman, who played Bea Smith and was one of the show's top stars, negotiated her own contract that included ongoing royalties, including DVD sales.
Like Gai Waterhouse's Presta, Queen Bea's life of crime is still reaping dividends, it seems.
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ABC News
21 hours ago
- ABC News
Acclaimed conductor, Sir Roger Norrington, dies aged 91
Sir Roger Norrington, the trail-blazing pioneer of the early music movement, died last week aged 91. He had one of the biggest impacts on classical music of any conductor of his generation. With ensembles these days regularly getting standing ovations for concerts on original instruments, it's easy to forget how far the music world has evolved in terms of audience acceptance, even reverence for historically informed performance thanks to radical innovators like Norrington. When he first began evangelising for "authentic" performances of baroque music in the 1960s — rearranging orchestras on stage, thinning the strings down to the numbers composers wrote for and all playing on gut strings without vibrato — many of his musical colleagues and critics were outraged. But Norrington persevered with forensic scholarship and an evangelistic fervour, taking his almost pathological aversion to vibrato into the realm of modern-instrument orchestras. One of his favourite chapters in his musical journey, he said, was working for 15 years with the Stuttgart Radio Symphony orchestra. During his time as principal conductor from 1998, he created "the Stuttgart sound"; what he believed was a near-perfect synthesis of historically informed music-making with the means of a modern and flexible orchestra. When they played Elgar's first symphony at the BBC Proms in 2008 without vibrato, critics said he'd gone too far. However, Norrington argued orchestras in Elgar's time played with much less vibrato than they do today. When he conducted the traditional encore of Land of Hope and Glory on the Last Night without vibrato, he asked the audience with his customary wry humour: "Can you sing with a bit more vibrato, please?" Audiences loved him. As Norrington pointed out to anyone who would listen: "The fact is orchestras didn't generally use vibrato until the 1930s. It is a fashion, like smoking, which came in at about the same time. Smoking has gone, so maybe vibrato will too." These days Norrington's brisk tempi, his scholarly, historically focused approach and what he loved calling "pure tone" are the norm, and he had much to celebrate in his last years. He has left behind a rich legacy of thousands of concerts world-wide and more than 150 recordings. Beyond his revolutionary impact on early music, with the Heinrich Schütz Choir he founded in the 1960s, and later his long-running London Classical Players (1978-97) which morphed into the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Norrington extended the concept of "period performance" to music of the 18th and 19th centuries. When he lapped at the door of 20th century music and shared his expertise with non-period instrument symphony orchestras, the musicians would say: "We've come for a detox, maestro." Norrington was unorthodox from day one, but always a team player. If you look at some of his concerts on YouTube, you'll see he usually conducted in rehearsals and concerts from a swivelling office chair; often chatting to the audience and encouraging them to clap between movements. "You are part of the team," he insisted. Part of his secret was bringing irrepressible joy to his music making. His aim, he always said, "is to re-create as best as possible, the original sound the composers would have heard; to honour their intentions". To that end, he always tried to disseminate his scholarly findings in revelatory liner notes on his recordings and "Experience Weekends". In these early outreach, total immersion programs — part marathon concert and part musicological seminar — he'd focus on a single major work or composer with performances backed up by lectures and open rehearsals. In 1991 Norrington was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumour. After surgery, doctors gave him months, then weeks to live. He began to say his goodbyes. Then he discovered an unconventional New York cancer doctor and, although he had to take a lot of medication, made a miraculous recovery. In 2021, he announced his intention to retire, giving a "no fuss" all-Haydn concert as his swan song outside London, at the Sage music venue near Newcastle in the north of England, with the Royal Northern Sinfonia. When asked if he'd be writing his memoirs next, he replied: "For my family only. No, I am not that interesting." Norrington was born into a musical family in 1934. His parents met while both were performing in a Gilbert and Sullivan amateur production. His father was President of Trinity College, Oxford, and inventor of the Norrington Table — the unofficial college listings according to academic success! Norrington learnt violin, sang as a boy soprano and later as a tenor after the family returned home to Oxford when he was 10. They evacuated to Canada during the war. "I found these musty old records. Some of the Beethoven was a bit difficult at first, but the Bach Brandenburg No. 6 was wonderful," he said. "I played it a hundred times a day. If this was so-called serious music, then it was for me." But he thought, like his parents, that he would spend his life making music in his spare time. He initially read English literature at Clare College, Cambridge, where he was a choral scholar, and then took a job at Oxford University Press, where he published religious books. Just as the English language has changed since 1800, he argued, so had the language of music. Although he sang and played in orchestras and quartets in his spare time, and saw conductors like Colin Davis, Giulini and Furtwängler in action, it wasn't until Norrington was 28 that he decided to take music more seriously, founding his Schütz choir. He was inspired by a new publication of the 17th century composer's church music that was virtually unknown, so there was no modern performing tradition. Their first London concert sparked a sensation. At that concert was the principal of the Royal College of Music, who offered him a place. Norrington then found himself studying conducting with Adrian Boult, learning composition and music history, however he bemusedly recalled he didn't have to do exams. "I don't even have grade one recorder," he said. In 1969 Norrington became the first director of Kent Opera, cutting his teeth in every production the company staged for more than a decade. Few associate him with opera but he has conducted more than 500 opera performances and made many recordings too. His approach was always to create everything afresh by going back to the sources and presenting the work as though it was a premiere. Before he retired, Norrington was asked about his extraordinary longevity and relationships with musicians. "I've always tried to earn rather than command respect," he said. "When you're older they're all younger than you and they think: 'Well, he must be good — he's been around such a long time, I had his records when I was 16!'" When he conducted the Last Night of the Proms concert in 2008, Norrington spoke movingly to the audience about what music meant to him. Get the latest classical music stories direct to your inbox
Sky News AU
a day ago
- Sky News AU
'Concrete and glass monstrosity': Ellen DeGeneres' newly-built home in UK roasted following her departure from US to avoid Trump presidency
The new home of Ellen DeGeneres has been dubbed a "monstrosity" following the former daytime television star's move to the United Kingdom. After only moving to the UK in 2024 with her wife, Australian actress Portia de Rossi, the couple have now put their $20 million (£15 million) Cotswolds farmhouse on the market and have moved into a hilltop mansion in Oxfordshire. The single-storey home was built by a UK-based developer, describing the glass-fronted house as an attempt at redefining "rural modern living". The monolithic building has been described by businessman and utility industry expert Steve Loftus as a "concrete and glass monstrosity" while another described the design as a "genuine hate crime". Others took aim at the new home, which the couple ultimately moved into following a series of reported issues at their farmhouse, including flooding. "The inside of Ellen DeGeneres' home in the Cotswolds is totally devoid of any I mean... Not only did she likely pay a fortune for the build, she also probably paid an 'interior decorator' for this. It looks like a prison," one said on X. "She had total control over the design and she went with 'unfinished bunker but with more grey and less functionality'. Says a lot about her personality (or lack thereof)," another wrote. "I'm struggling to see any 'farmhouse roots'! It's a brutalist bunker," a third said. Another compared the residence to that of a home of a villain in the James Bond film series. The home is about a 30-minute drive from the farmhouse, and fans of the celebrity couple got a glimpse into the view from their house in April when Ellen posted a photo of de Rossi who was photographing a rainbow from their front yard. The criticism over DeGeneres' new home comes after she confirmed she and her wife permanently relocated to the UK after Donald Trump's return to the White House. The 67-year-old comedian made the candid admission during a live conversation with BBC broadcaster Richard Bacon at the Everyman Theatre in Cheltenham on Sunday. DeGeneres explained the pair initially planned to spend just a few months each year in the UK and purchased what they believed would be a "part-time house" in the Cotswolds in 2024. But the couple decided to stay put after Trump defeated Democratic nominee Kamala Harris in the latest US election. "Everything here is just better," she said of the UK. "We got here the day before the election and woke up to lots of texts from our friends with crying emojis, and I was like, 'He got in'. "And we're like, 'We're staying here'."
Sky News AU
2 days ago
- Sky News AU
Ellen DeGeneres reveals she and Aussie wife Portia de Rossi 'moved to the UK because of Trump' and plan to stay 'for good'
Ellen DeGeneres has confirmed she and her wife, Australian actress Portia de Rossi, permanently relocated to the UK after Donald Trump's return to the White House. The 67-year-old comedian made the candid admission during a live conversation with BBC broadcaster Richard Bacon at the Everyman Theatre in Cheltenham on Sunday. DeGeneres explained the pair initially planned to spend just a few months each year in the UK and purchased what they believed would be a "part-time house" in the Cotswolds in 2024. But the couple decided to stay put after Trump defeated Democratic nominee Kamala Harris in the latest US election. "We got here the day before the election and woke up to lots of texts from our friends with crying emojis, and I was like, 'He got in'," she recalled. "And we're like, 'We're staying here'." The Finding Nemo star also hinted that she and de Rossi, 52, may remarry in the UK, after tying the knot in Los Angeles back in August 2008. "The Baptist Church in America is trying to reverse gay marriage," she said. "They're trying to literally stop it from happening in the future and possibly reverse it. Portia and I are already looking into it, and if they do that, we're going to get married here." She continued: "I wish we were at a place where it was not scary for people to be who they are. I wish that we lived in a society where everybody could accept other people and their differences." DeGeneres' revelation follows a wave of celebrity moves out of the US, including fellow comedian and Trump hater Rosie O'Donnell, who recently relocated to Ireland with her 12-year-old child. "Good for you @Rosie," DeGeneres wrote on Instagram last week, alongside a screenshot of Trump's Truth Social post claiming he was "giving serious consideration" to revoking his long-time nemesis's US citizenship. More recently, DeGeneres publicly condemned the Trump administration's move to shut down The Trevor Project, a national suicide prevention service for LGBTQ+ youth. "I helped launch the Trevor Project over 30 years ago. What kind of person would do this?" she posted on Instagram on Saturday. When she's not hitting out at Trump or sharing throwbacks from her now-cancelled daytime show, DeGeneres has been delighting her 135 million Instagram followers with snaps of her new life in the British countryside. "Everything here is just better- the way animals are treated, people are polite. I just love it here," she told Bacon. "We moved here in November, which was not the ideal time, but I saw snow for the first time in my life. We love it here. Portia flew her horses here, and I have chickens, and we had sheep for about two weeks." The couple initially moved into a £15 million (about AUD$30 million) estate in the Cotswolds, but their 43-acre property was hit by severe flooding shortly after their arrival. They have since relocated just around the corner, into a modern mansion boasting sweeping views of the countryside. The 10,000-square-foot home includes a cinema, gym, steam room, outdoor infinity pool and a striking open-plan kitchen with a hanging fireplace. The master suite features a vast walk-in wardrobe and dual en-suites, while four additional bedrooms also have private bathrooms. While DeGeneres and de Rossi appear thrilled with their new home, the bold design hasn't won everyone over. "Does not belong in the Cotswolds," one user commented under a Luxury Listings post showcasing the property, earning more than 200 likes (at time of writing). Another wrote: "I'd rather have a gorgeous traditional Cotswolds manor that pays tribute to the history of the area," with over 700 likes. "That house doesn't reflect the Cotswolds whatsoever. Shame it got planning permission," added another critic. A fourth remarked: "I'm sorry you move to the Cotswolds and THAT is what you live in? No way." But others were quick to defend the contemporary build, with one fan writing: "Completely utterly exquisite!!!!" and another saying: "This is stunning and I get it on all levels."
