Ted Danson Was Once the Highest-Paid Actor on TV—Here’s How Much He Earns Now
Ted Danson is a TV legend. The actor, who first rose to fame for the role of Sam Malone on the NBC sitcom Cheers, has also appeared in a whole host of other movies and TV shows, including the critically beloved NBC comedy The Good Place. Danson now stars in Netflix’s A Man on the Inside, which comes from the mind of Mike Schur, who is better known for creating The Office, co-creating Parks and Recreation, and then Brooklyn Nine-Nine and The Good Place.
A Man on the Inside is based on Maite Alberdi’s 2020 documentary The Mole Agent and features Danson as a retiree turned amateur private investigator. The show just premiered on Netflix to solid reviews and great viewership numbers, which isn’t a surprise considering how many people love Danson.
More from StyleCaster
Related: Who were the Zodiac Killer suspects?
But how much has Ted Danson made during his long and very successful career? What is his net worth? And how much has he been paid throughout the course of his career?
Ted Danson’s net worth
According to Celebrity Net Worth, Danson’s worth is around $80 million dollars. That’s nothing to scoff at, but when we consider how long Danson has been in the business and how many successful shows he’s been in, it all starts to make sense. Though not all of his salaries throughout his career have been reported, we do know that during the final seasons of Cheers Danson was the best-paid actor on television, earning $450,000 per episode.
That’s around $12 million a season for Seasons 9, 10 and 11. And, that’s without going into the residuals Danson makes to this day, which are reported to be around $5 million per year. He could have probably just retired and lived a comfortable life off his Cheers money alone, but Danson did not do that.
From 2011 to 2015, he started in the drama CSI, where he was paid $250,000 per episode. He appeared in 86 episodes of the series in total. That’s the same reported amount Danson got for every episode of his NBC comedy The Good Place, which had a total of 53 episodes. All of this adds up, particularly considering Danson has never been the type for a lavish lifestyle. There are no details regarding how much Danson got paid for A Man on the Inside, but considering the numbers he’s commanded before, it’s probably a pretty good sum.
Danson has also appeared in movies like Three Men and a Baby and Three Men and a Little Lady (1990), the first of which was a surprise hit. He also counts to his credit movies like The Onion Field, Body Heat, Creepshow, Dad, and Saving Private Ryan.
His other TV leading roles include Becker, CSI: Cyber—where he was presumably paid more or less the same than he was on CSI— the second season of the FX anthology Fargo, and NBC’s Mr. Mayor. He has also appeared in shows like Damages, Bored to Death, The Orville, and Curb Your Enthusiasm.
Danson has also written a book titled Oceana: Our Endangered Oceans and What We Can Do To Save Them. Alongside his wife Mary Steenburgen, he owns a number of properties in the Los Angeles area, all worth millions of dollars. The pair also owns a small cottage in Nashville and a six-acre multi-residence spread on Martha’s Vineyard.
Best of StyleCaster
Sign up for Stylecaster's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Solve the daily Crossword
