$859 a day... while only a fraction of what he normally earns its still hard to feel sorry for him on that kind of cash.
Keep in mind: If you're an actor that gets a movie, a recurring role in a series and a handful of commercials, you're having a great year. The feature is 3-4 weeks of 5-day weeks. That's $20k. The series is maybe 2 weeks. That's $10k. The commercials are a day each. That's $4k. You're killing it and you're making $34k before taxes in the place where housing is the most expensive in the United States. You're also having a hard time keeping your table-waiting job because that feature blew a big old hole in your other gig. A DGA director might get $10k for a commercial.. but he might only get two commercials a year. Welcome to Hollywood. (BTW - that $859 a day is for movies like Transformers. Movies like Primer? $100 a day.)
Oh sure for the common actor trying to make it I have no doubt the up and down nature of the business means that they have to struggle pretty hard to make ends meet. Its similar to contract work in many other fields, you gotta make it when you can to get you over the dry spells. My point was just in regards to Bruce agreeing to 2 movies as a deposit on his loan was not THAT bad a deal considering that he was still going to earn a decent wage (relative to people outside of Hollywood) during the filming. It was a sweet deal even if the 2 movies had turned out to be duds.