Andrew Lincoln is an English actor best known for his role as Mark in Love Actually and as Rick Grimes on The Walking Dead. He’s become a household name through these famous performances, a remarkable feat considering his onscreen acting career only started in 1994, making him relatively new to the mainstream entertainment industry. Does this make him a wunderkind? Well, he’s in his forties so no, but it does mean that Hollywood immediately recognized his lucrative marketability and knew how to capitalize on it. But considering he’s still got many years of his career ahead of him, and especially in the context of his announcement that he’s leaving The Walking Dead after season nine, does Lincoln’s current net worth reflect the early start he’s had?
Andrew Lincoln Net Worth As Of 2019: $16 Million
https://www.instagram.com/p/BhCn8wUgsvc/?taken-by=official.andrewlincoln
A fair amount of Lincoln’s wealth is derived from his film career, but his real cash cow is, of course, The Walking Dead, for which he reportedly earns $650,000 an episode. This makes him one of the wealthiest members of the cast, but still on the lower end of the Hollywood salary spectrum. But how did he come to be as successful as he’s become? Only a trip down memory lane will tell.
Early Life
https://www.instagram.com/p/BglwMSehZxf/?taken-by=andrewlincoln__
Believe it or not, Lincoln was actually born with the name Andrew James Clutterbuck on September 14, 1973, in London. His father was a civil engineer and his job required him and his family to move around the country for much of Andrew’s childhood. Eventually, he attended the Beechen Cliff School. It was here, during a production of Oliver!, that a 14-year-old Lincoln discovered his love of acting. From then on, he spent his summers at the National Youth Theater to further develop his performance chops. This led to him attending the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts during college.
He was still in school when he landed his first screen role, a bit part in an episode of the British sitcom Drop the Dead Donkey. He graduated from the RADA in 1995 and was almost immediately offered his first leading role, that of Edgar ‘Egg’ Cook on the BBC drama This Life. Andrew won acclaim for his performance and it was shortly after this that his agent suggested taking a stage name as Clutterbuck was too “Dickensian” for a proper actor. Though it causes some family strife, Andrew took the surname ‘Lincoln’ going forward.
This Life lasted only a single season, but Lincoln went on to star in numerous British TV shows, most notably as the teacher Simon Casey on Teachers, a show that ran from 2001-2003 but is still a staple of Channel 4 programming to this day.
2003-2010
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bj73PwSHAgK/?tagged=andrewlincoln
In 2003, Lincoln landed the role that launched him into the international spotlight. In Love Actually, he played a man stuck with a crush on his best friend’s wife and was in the film’s most famous scene, where he silently reveals his feelings to the woman he loves through a series of giant flashcards while his best friend sits unknowingly in the other room. Though it put his face out to a wider audience, Lincoln was not immediately catapulted into fame. He spent the next few years doing mostly TV movies and smaller film roles.
During this period, he got to revisit the role of Edgar Cook in This Life+10, had an extended arc on the show Afterlife, narrated the audiobook of JK Rowling’s Quidditch Through the Ages and, in 2006, got married to Gael Anderson, daughter of Jethro Tull frontman Ian Anderson. The two remain married to this day and have two children together.
2010-Present
https://www.instagram.com/p/BhmblcFAa5-/?taken-by=official.andrewlincoln
In 2010, it was announced that Lincoln would star in AMC’s The Walking Dead, a serialized adaptation of the post-apocalyptic zombie-horror comic book of the same name. As Sheriff Rick Grimes, Lincoln’s character was introduced to the story in media res, a difficult position for any actor to work from but Andrew pulled it off to great critical acclaim. Under his lead, The Walking Dead remains the highest rated drama in the history of the Nielsen rating system.
Lincoln was originally contracted for six seasons and signed on to do two more, but he announced in May of 2018 that the subsequent ninth season of the show would be his last, with popular costar Norman Reedus taking over as the show’s lead. His excuse for leaving such a lucrative job was that he was simply tired of the role and was looking to do more movies. The only projects he’d been able to take part in since starting his stint on The Walking Dead was a parody segment on Robot Chicken, a similar TV short parody of Love Actually called Red Nose Day Actually and a brief cameo on the spin-off show Fear the Walking Dead. No wonder he’s been feeling cabin fever for the better part of a decade now.
