Miriam Margolyes made her mark on the Harry Potter franchise when she played Professor Sprout in the iconic films – however, the 84-year-old has revealed that she made far more on the video app Cameo, raking in a six-figure sum.
The 84-year-old actor is best known for her roles in Yentl, Little Dorrit, Mulan, Romeo + Juliet and Martin Scorsese’s The Age of Innocence, for which she won a BAFTA for Best Supporting Actress.
Despite becoming one of Britain’s best-known actors over the last 60 years, Margolyes revealed that she can “spend rather more freely” than she would have been able to thanks to her earnings from Cameo – a video-sharing website where celebrities and notable figures are paid to send personalised messages to fans.
Speaking to Romesh Ranganathan on his podcast, the actor said that she’s made £570,000 in total since joining in 2020.
When asked whether it was true that she had made £320,000 from the app Cameo, Margoyles said that it’s “actually more now”.
“I’ve made £570,000 at the last count. That’s the whole shebang since I joined Cameo,” she said.
“I try not to spend more than a couple of hours on it a day because life’s for living, but people are asking. One of the things I notice is that the Cameos now are asking for advice and for what they call ‘pep talks’ rather than happy birthday or something like that.
“It’s difficult because they don’t give you enough information to know that you’re telling them useful stuff but I’m very grateful to Cameo I have to be honest because it means that I can spend rather more freely than I would have done otherwise.”
Margolyes, who charges fans £100 for video messages, said in 2022 that she was paid just £60,000 for playing the role of Professor Prout in the Harry Potter films. She appeared in two – Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets and Harry Potter and the Death Hallows Part 2 – and later told Metro: “I never made Harry Potter millions.
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“I think the three or four main people did and they deserve it but my character didn’t. I was only in two and I only got £60,000 for being Professor Sprout but I’m not grumbling… now. I grumbled then but it made me very famous.”
This means that she’s already made her Harry Potter fee almost 10 times over just on Cameo.
Speaking about the franchise on The Romesh Ranganathan Show, Margolyes said that she didn’t realise how she had become a part of people’s childhoods through Harry Potter.
“When people say on Cameo, ‘we’re having a Harry Potter themed wedding’ and I would say, ‘well, I think it’s time you let that go.’ But you can’t let go bits of your childhood and I didn’t realise that because it wasn’t my childhood,” she said. “I was in my 50s or 60s when I did that.
“I think it’s terrific. I think it’s wonderful. I’ve let it go. It wasn’t the most important job for me. It was important in terms of career but it didn’t impinge on me the way working with Donald Sinden [did], for example, when I did She Stoops to Conquer.”
A number of British actors, musicians and TV personalities are available on Cameo including Shaun of the Dead’s Nick Frost, Harry Potter star Bonnie Wright and Friday Night Dinner’s Mark Heap.
In 2022, The Inbetweeners’ James Buckley became Cameo’s first UK millionaire after hundreds of fans requested videos of him quoting his famous Jay Cartwright catchphrases.