Ukrainian actress Myroslava Filipovych, known for her roles in Servant of the People, Souvenir from Odesa and SydOenko&Sydorenko, has spoken candidly about pay in the film industry, telling Focus magazine that fees have shifted dramatically over the course of her career.
She said that at the start of her career she was willing to accept the lowest sums just to gain experience.
Her first filming work in Kyiv came on projects such as Chuzhi Pomylky, where she was paid 400 to 600 hryvnias per shift. She said she agreed to the rate because she was unknown and needed both experience and work. Before moving to the capital, she had filmed in the series Mukhtar, earning $80 a shift over two days of shooting, which she said felt like incredible money at the time. For Servant of the People, she was paid roughly $200 to $250 a day, though she noted this was in different years and at a different exchange rate.
Servant of the People is the Ukrainian television comedy in which Volodymyr Zelensky played a schoolteacher who becomes president, before he was elected Ukraine's actual president in 2019.
Pay after the invasion
Filipovych said sums changed sharply after Russia's full-scale invasion began in 2022. Before the invasion, her rate for a lead or supporting role was $450 to $600 a day.
She said film production stopped after 2022, and when it began recovering, work became scarce and the market shrank. Work that had previously paid 15,000 hryvnias began being offered at 5,000 to 6,000 hryvnias, which she said was less than extras are paid in America.
She said she knew of professionals now being offered as little as 1,500 hryvnias per shift, and that the highest rate she knew of in Ukraine today was about 40,000 hryvnias a day, earned by just one actor.
Focus previously reported that Natalka Denysenko had also revealed the size of her own fees during the war.
