For example, a middle-ranking actor on EastEnders can get 65 episodes per year at £1,100 each. Salaries can therefore range from £12,000 to well over £200,000 depending on popularity. £ Across Emmerdale, Coronation Street and EastEnders, the pay structure is the same: actors get a fee per episode, which can range from £400 to £2,000, with a guaranteed number of episodes a year (as few as 30 or as many as 100) and a repeat fee. Of EastEnders’ £29.9m annual budget, £2.9m is spent on scripts, while £6.9m is spent on paying actors, extras and chaperones for child actors. Writers can be paid anything between £5,000 and £12,000 per episode, depending on experience. £ About one third of a soap’s budget goes on actors’ and writers’ wages. (There are 260 episodes of Coronation Street annually, though at 22 minutes, an episode of Corrie is seven minutes shorter than an episode of EastEnders.)

ITV’s costs are more difficult to ascertain, but it would be fair to say that Coronation Street has a comparable budget, with Emmerdale’s closer to £125,000 per episode.

How much do soap opera stars make