Melissa Joan Hart revealed she still collects residuals from a 1986 blockbuster despite being cut from the final film.
The “Sabrina the Teenage Witch” star, 50, said’s “Virtual Reali-Tea” podcast that she receives periodic payments from “Crocodile Dundee” even though her scenes never made it to theaters. Hart was approximately 10 years old when she filmed the role.
“I was in ‘Crocodile Dundee,’ and even though you will not see my face in it — I was cut out — I still get my 26 cents every few months or something,” Hart said in the interview.
The actress noted that the payments continue to shrink as decades pass. She pointed to a Los Angeles drinking establishment that has built its entire concept around the niche Hollywood practice.
“There’s actually a bar in LA called Residuals where you can take your residuals and put it toward your drinks,” Hart mused.
Hart reportedly played a young girl who was miraculously healed by Paul Hogan’s Crocodile Dundee after skinning her knee in Central Park, according to iHeartRadio’s “Too Much Information” podcast. The scene never appeared in the finished movie.
The “Melissa & Joey” alum previously addressed the experience in a 2011 interview with SheKnows, framing it as formative for her resilience in the entertainment industry.
“You find that you have a lot of rejection and you learn young that you have to let it go, and if you don’t have thick skin, you aren’t going to make it,” she said at the time.
That early setback preceded her breakthrough. Hart landed the title role in Nickelodeon’s “Clarissa Explains It All,” which ran for five seasons from 1991 to 1994 and established her as a teen television fixture.
She later starred as Sabrina Spellman in ABC’s “Sabrina the Teenage Witch” for seven seasons from 1996 to 2000, cementing her status as one of the most recognizable young actresses of her generation.
In the viral moment that launched this latest round of coverage, Hart’s casual mention of the decades-old “Crocodile Dundee” paycheck struck a chord with audiences familiar with Hollywood’s Byzantine compensation structures. Child actors whose scenes are deleted from final cuts typically still receive residual payments through union agreements, though the amounts often become negligible over time. Hart’s specific figure — 26 cents — illustrated how dramatically those payments can dwinkle.
Her current professional focus has shifted toward unscripted television and lifestyle programming. Hart has appeared in multiple Lifetime movies in recent years, including “The Bad Guardian,” “Killing the Competition” and “Would You Kill for Me? The Mary Bailey Story.”
Her latest project finds her competing alongside other 1990s television icons. “Totally ’90s House,” hosted by Jaleel White, features Hart, Jodie Sweetin, Matthew Lawrence, Joey Lawrence, Keshia Knight Pulliam, Brian Austin Green and Beverley Mitchell as they renovate a home frozen in the decade of their collective stardom. The winning team earns $25,000 for charity.
Hart has increasingly incorporated her interest in interior design into her public persona, making the HGTV series a natural extension of her evolving career.
“Totally ’90s House” premieres Wednesday at 9 p.m. ET on HGTV.