With living costs still squeezing households, former child actor Danny Pintauro says he’s doing everything he can to stay afloat.
Best known for his role on ABC’s Who’s the Boss?, Pintauro later stepped away from the spotlight for a time and went on to attend Stanford University, where he studied English and theater and graduated with a degree in drama in 1998.
Although many people remember him most from Who’s the Boss?, his screen career began earlier with a part on the soap opera As the World Turns. He later appeared in the 1983 horror film Cujo.
In recent years, however, steady Hollywood work has been harder to come by. Pintauro has now shared that he is juggling five jobs, including delivery work for Amazon Flex.
Earlier this year, the 50-year-old drew widespread attention after posting a photo of himself sitting in a car packed with Amazon packages.
Alongside the image, he wrote on April 8: “The entertainment business has been soooo slow, so I’ve been doing what a lot of people do — figuring it out, showing up, and taking the work that’s there while I keep building the work I really want. 38 packages today!”
He also added: “There’s no shame in staying in motion.”
Pintauro has since opened up further about his current situation during an appearance on the Pod Meets World podcast, hosted by Boy Meets World stars Rider Strong, Danielle Fishel and Will Friedle.
Speaking on the show, he said: “[Amazon is] one of the five different gig jobs that I’m doing right now,” Pintauro told them. “We’re gig actors. Acting is the gig. It’s one of the six gigs.”
He made clear that his experience is far from unique, saying many performers are taking on other forms of work in order to get by.
As he put it: “We have to do what we have to do to survive,” Pintauro said of this. “We have got to keep moving as humans. And I know you can all relate to what that looks like. We’re all doing it. I am not different from you in that sense.”
Pintauro also discussed the long-running assumption that actors from hit shows continue receiving meaningful residual income, saying that is not the case for him when it comes to Who’s The Boss?.
Outside of Amazon deliveries, he said his work includes acting coaching, teaching classes and workshops, building his coaching studio, and creating custom book nooks for clients.
He recently addressed the issue again in comments to Fox News, explaining that the public often misunderstands how little money some former TV stars actually receive years later.
“People always assume that if they recognize you, you must be financially set for life, and that’s just not how it works. There’s this very inflated idea of what residuals — especially residuals from that era, from the 80s — look like.
“We were working on a television model. DVD compilations didn’t exist, so there’s nothing in the contract to stipulate what to do if that should come up. Reruns and syndication were barely a thing, so the contracts were just not conducive to residuals.”
He continued: “When a network purchases the series, I get some money from the purchase, but I get less money every time it gets purchased.
“Season 1, for instance, has been purchased so many times by every network where it airs that I’m getting five to six cents per episode, and then they can air it as many times as they want.”