Interesting interview with Cassandra Peterson, the woman behind the “Elvira” character, up at the Onion’s AV Club. She makes a particularly interesting remark on the subject of motivation:
My character’s not owned by anyone, which has a great side and a bad side. The great side is, I can do anything I want. The bad side is, I don’t have the money from a big studio behind me, so I get much less exposure. But it pays off when I go to horror conventions or Comic-Con, where you see people from Star Wars or Star Trek or whatever. When people wonder why they get tired of their characters and I don’t, it’s because I make 100 percent of everything I get, and they only make a small percentage. The studio gets all the money, and they’re just “allowed” to appear and get paid a fee. When I sell something, I get all the money. So I don’t ever get tired of my character, because I get all the money. I was at a convention with “Captain Kirk”—you know, what’s his name—and all he wanted to do was get away from that character. And it’s because he can’t make any money at it.
