Interesting dilemma. It's not quite asset rich cash poor, it's more high clashflow low residual/retention.

An emerging underclass of highly bankable, recognisable actors who can't break through to "star class" may actually be an old problem rewritten.

I can't help feeling the Hollywood system is rife with intermediaries taking a cut for nothing, and a huge amount of off book debt management to reward execs for billions of dollars in worth, neither taxed nor shared down the contract chains to the content makers.

Even from my own two or three orders of magnitude lower income base, I genuinely feel sorry for her. In her own terms, she's trapped.

There's a Victorian music hall song "I'm only a bird, in a gilded cage" which comes to mind.

There's lots of lawyer associates working long hours in big law firms in expensive cities for not much money while the senior partners rake it in.

Not just lawyers and actors.