John Leguizamo revealed that his role as Sid the sloth in the Ice Age franchise earned him enough to buy two homes.
In an interview with Page Six, the film and stage actor shared just how big an impact the series of five movies, and several video games, had on his finances. "It got me a brownstone," he said. "It got me two extra homes, it got me a beautiful beachfront house in the Hamptons, it got me two pools!"
The first Ice Age was produced on a budget of $59 million, a relatively small budget compared to Pixar's Monsters, Inc. at $115 million the year prior. The Blue Sky Studios and 20th Century Fox Animation production was a surprise hit, garnering over $380 million at the worldwide box office.
Leguizamo, who co-starred in the movie with Ray Romano and Denis Leary, said that "nobody thought" Ice Age would be as successful as it was. "They didn’t even have toys or merchandise," he added. "[Then] it comes out and it’s a blockbuster and it’s beloved."
For the first film, he was paid scale, but by the time the third movie rolled around, he and his co-stars could leverage the franchise's success for a higher payday. "We were asking because it was so huge. I mean, it’s over a billion-dollar industry," he said, noting that at one point Fox Animation attempted to recast their roles.
He teased that a seventh Ice Age is in development—the sixth film was a spin-off that debuted on Disney+ in 2022 and starred none of the original cast—and he's in negotiations alongside his co-stars. He said that the payday for that one could be big enough to pay for a helicopter.
The 63-year-old actor made his major motion picture debut with a pair of movies in 1993: Super Mario Bros. and Carlito's Way. He's since gone on to star in countless projects, from Land of the Dead and Moulin Rouge!, to John Wick and Encanto. His next major project is the series The Green Veil, in which he portrays an FBI agent who forcibly takes Native American children from their homes to be put up for adoption. He's also set to appear in the Apple TV+ series Firebug, which kicked off production in Vancouver in March.
