Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports
Television personality and stunt performer Steve-O in attendance during UFC 246 at T-Mobile Arena
It’s been more than 25 years since the first season of Jackass was unleashed on an unsuspecting world while introducing viewers to the merry gang of pranksters who became celebrities practically overnight. That includes Steve-O, who has come a long way since the days when he was making the microscopic amount of money he says he received when the series first began.
MTV found itself with a hit on its hands at the start of the millennium thanks to Jackass, the masterfully moronic series that originally aired in the fall of 2000. The program revolved around a crew of largely amateur stuntmen putting their bodies on the line for our enjoyment, and it spawned three seasons that were followed by a movie franchise whose fifth (and supposedly final) installment will come out this week.
Johnny Knoxville has been the ringleader of the Jackass crew since its inception, and while every member of the cast has experienced a pretty wild ride through life, it’s hard to rival the roller coaster Steve-O endured after being thrust into the spotlight.
The 52-year-old has been incredibly candid about the ups and downs he’s endured over the past few decades, and he recently opened up about how far he’s come on the financial front while reflecting on how little he was paid when the show was getting off the ground.
Steve-O made way, way less than you would think while getting paid per stunt on the first season of Jackass
A number of Jackass cast members have had well-documented issues with substance abuse that’s inextricably linked with the pain they subjected themselves to on the show and the fame that came with being a part of it; Ryan Dunn passed away after crashing his car while drunk in 2011, and Bam Margera has been sober for around a year and a half after a lengthy and public battle with addiction.
Steve-O is also a member of that club, as he had a history of drug abuse that escalated toward the height of his fame. In 2008, his co-stars staged an intervention that led to multiple stints in rehab and psychiatric hospitals, and a documentary that aired on MTV the following year chronicled just how things had gotten before he was able to clean things up (he’s celebrated his 18th year of sobriety in March).
His issues on that front began well before his Jackass days, as evidenced by the fact that he referred to himself as an “alcoholic drug addict” during an interview with Playboy where he discussed his origin story while reflecting on his career.
He’d been homeless for three years before enrolling in the Ringling Bros. Clown College to pursue his dreams of becoming a stuntman, and the skills he learned led to him landing a role on the first season of Jackass.
However, he noted it was not the most lucrative job when he was initially recruited. There was no way to know the show would become the sensation it would transform into when they were filming, and at the time, he was paid per stunt as opposed to being given an overall deal.
He cited the infamous moment where he swallowed and regurgitated a goldfish as the start of the meteoric rise, but he said he was only paid $200 for doing so. The first season also featured a self-explanatory segment called “Shark Hugs” where one of those aquatic predators took a chunk out of his finger, which he did in exchange for $500.
He said he got “paid less than $1,500” after taxes when the first season wrapped, but it probably ended up being worth it based on how things panned out from there.