Actor David Krumholtz quits Hollywood over lack of ‘fair pay,’ ‘conglomerate corporatizing,’ social media demands

Krumholtz, who has worked in Hollywood for more than three decades, said he recently decided to put his acting career on hold after worrying that leaving the industry could leave him financially unable to support himself.

“I kinda sorta put my acting career on hold the other day. It’s been something I’ve been petrified to do for years,” Krumholtz wrote in a post on Threads that has since been deleted. “Specifically, the fear was that I’d go broke and not be able to handle being out of the game.”

Krumholtz said he sent a “definitive email” to quit, which brought him a sense of relief.

“A huge wave of relief washed over me,” he said. “Not sure what I’m going to do for money instead, or how I’m going to do it, but I just removed a humongous burden, one that I truly didn’t fathom the weight of until it was gone.”

He added that he was “Frustrated, fed up, fried.”

The actor continued by explaining he spent the past year fighting for roles offering less money, saying, “Exploitative art isn’t art. And artists deserve a fair pay percentage for work that assists their employers in making profits.” He added that the industry compensated him more fairly as a teenager in the 1990s, blaming the “conglomerate corporatizing of Hollywood” and saying that “those unwritten rules of mutual respect have shifted … Drastically. I’m being asked to ‘hang in there’ by my own union and reps.”

“[I’m] asked to reinvent myself on social media for likes and follows so that I can be considered for fan conventions and internet ads just so I can make the money that simply acting on a TV show or film or stage refuses to pay me anymore,” he wrote. “I, along with many talented folks, not just actors, are being mass demoted. Imagine you excel in your career for 34 years, just to be drastically demoted for it.”

Krumholtz is known for his roles in the film “10 Things I Hate About You” and Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer.” He also played the head elf Bernard in the 1994 film “The Santa Clause,” and in June he told Page Six that he is receiving just $150 a year in residuals from the franchise.