Michael Hollick never thought his big break would come in a video game.

All those years when he was struggling to get by as an aspiring actor — tending bar, working in a bagel shop in Manhattan, spraying perfume at Bloomingdale’s — he was aiming for Broadway and prime time.

As he moved from regional theater to soap operas, middling musicals and Law & Order, he remained just another good-looking guy hoping for an audition.

His face still is not famous, but Hollick’s voice and gait have moved into the pop culture firmament recently as those of Niko Bellic, the sardonic, textured Balkan criminal at the heart of Grand Theft Auto 4, the acclaimed gangster fantasy that has become the fastest-selling game to date. Produced by Rockstar Games and its corporate parent, Take-Two Interactive Software, the game has generated at least $600 million in sales in its first three weeks.

Yet even as Saturday Night Live has spoofed the Niko character, even as Hollick’s voice has been heard in tens of millions of homes in advertisements broadcast during American Idol and the NBA playoffs, even as fans have flocked to his MySpace page, his triumph has been bittersweet.

Hollick was paid about $100,000 over roughly 15 months between late 2006 and early this year for all of his voice acting and motion-capture work on the game, with zero royalties or residuals in sight, he said.

Had this been a television program, a film, an album, a radio show or virtually any other sort of traditional recorded performance, Hollick and the other actors would have made millions by now. As it stands, they get nothing beyond the standard Screen Actors Guild day rate they were originally paid.

That is because the contracts between the actors’ union and the entertainment industry make little or no provision for…