The star who benefitted most from ‘The Shawshank Redemption’

When Morgan Freeman and Tim Robbins spent three months shooting Shawshank in the Ohio State Reformatory in Mansfield, Ohio, they could scarcely have predicted its enduring legacy. Both stars have undoubtedly made out like bandits as the decades wore on. Warner Bros Home Entertainment executive Jeff Baker told The Wall Street Journal, “It’s an incredible moneymaking asset that continues to resonate with viewers.”

However, it is one of the film’s supporting players who has always been most grateful for the enduring cheques he receives yearly – which even climbed near the six-figure mark around the film’s 10th anniversary in 2004. In fact, he explained that his Shawshank residuals have always amounted to “a very substantial income” that has had a much longer life than he expected. “I suspect my daughter, years from now, will still be getting cheques,” he smiled.

Although the actor in question isn’t one of the film’s leads, he did play arguably the third most important character. In fact, when Bob Gunton auditioned for the movie, he knew the part of sadistic prison warden Samuel Norton was much better than the usual roles he went out for.

“It’s one of the few movies where I got a lot of screen time and also great scenes,” Gunton told The AV Club in 2015.

Fittingly, because the part was so integral to the film, producers wanted to hire a more established star, but director Frank Darabont, cinematographer Roger Deakins, and Robbins cooked up a screentest to convince the studio Gunton was the right man for the job. Thankfully, to his eternal relief, he got a call saying, “You’re on. They want you.”

Heartwarmingly, Gunton’s Shawshank experience has lasted far longer than the couple of months he spent in Ohio – and not just in terms of the financial rewards. “I’m sure that, unless the gods come down from heaven with another marvellous movie, that will be the movie that I will probably be remembered for and that I am most proud of,” Gunton said. He then revealed that everywhere he goes, he meets Shawshank devotees.

“Recently, I was in South America doing a movie about the Chilean miners,” Gunton explained, “and down there, people would come up to me with their words of homage for the movie.” He also claimed he has met people in far-flung locations like Europe, Morocco, and Australia who told him how meaningful the film was to them. It means a lot for a working character actor like Gunton to be a part of something that “has become such a cult and has such devotion around the world.”

All in all, the long-tailed dominance of a movie like Shawshank is a testament to Hollywood letting certain films find their audiences over time and then supporting them. However, it’s also a damning indictment of the modern media landscape, which has massively minimised residuals for actors.

You see, in the streaming era, where streamers measure subscriber numbers instead of how many people watch a specific movie or show, it’s become much harder to ascertain exactly how many people watch things. Consequently, residual cheques have tapered off significantly for most actors, and in an industry where many don’t work all year round, this has removed a vital safety net for fallow periods.

It all begs the question: would an actor like Gunton stand any chance of benefitting from a long-running Shawshank-esque success if it had been made in 2024 instead of 1994? Sadly, the answer is, ‘Probably not.’

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