Full List: The World’s Highest-Paid Actors 2016
Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson elbowed out reigning top-ranked Robert Downey Jr. to become the world’s highest-paid actor–and scored his biggest ever annual paycheck in the process.
Johnson’s $64.5 million payday more than doubled his 2015 earnings, making him this year’s biggest dollar gainer. The erstwhile wrestler’s millions and millions came from upfront fees for movies including Central Intelligence and Fast 8, as well as the forthcoming Baywatch in which he’s set to play Mitch Buchannon. A staple of the Fast and Furious franchise, the stellar box office performance of his recent films (including 2015’s hit San Andreas) have seen his quotes skyrocket.
“I can kick ass better than anyone on the planet,” Johnson told FORBES in 2012. “And I have a decent smile.”
He bested second-ranked Jackie Chan($61 million), who mints money with movies in China, and Matt Damon, who tallied $55 million largely off the success of The Martian to boost his earnings 120% year over year.
Rounding out the top five is perennial list member Tom Cruise (No. 4, $53 million) and Johnny Depp (No. 5, $48 million), the latter of whom received a restraining order against him in May, after his wife, Amber Heard, alleged he physically and verbally abused her. The couple reached a $7 million divorce settlement in August; Heard donated the cash to charity. The damning accusations did not impact his earnings during our scoring period–he pocketed an estimated eight figures upfront apiece for the latest Pirates of the Caribbean installment and box office bomb Alice Through the Looking Glass–but his paychecks look set to plummet next year.
The only returnee to the ranking: Harrison Ford, who sneaks on with an outsized payday for his return as Han Solo in 2015’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens. He most recently made the list in 2009.
From the squared ring to the silver screen: Dwayne Johnson nabbed his highest-ever paycheck thanks to soaring upfront fees.
“I can kick ass better than anyone on the planet,” Johnson told FORBES in 2012. “And I have a decent smile.”
He bested second-ranked Jackie Chan($61 million), who mints money with movies in China, and Matt Damon, who tallied $55 million largely off the success of The Martian to boost his earnings 120% year over year.
A quarter of this global list hail from outside the U.S. Aside from Chan, four Bollywood stars returned to the ranking for the second year in a row. Shah Rukh Khan ($33 million), the top-ranked Indian actor, banked as much as Downey Jr. , while Akshay Kumar ($31.5 million) earned the same as Brad Pitt in our scoring period.
Almost universally, a gender pay gap persists. The world’s highest-paid actress, Jennifer Lawrence ($46 million), earned 71% of Johnson’s $64.5 million. That ratio is a little lower than the 79 cents a white woman is typically paid to every dollar a white man makes, but better than the pay disparity Hispanic or Black women typically face.
There are simply more big budget roles for men that pay the high fees and cut of profits needed to score multimillion take-homes. In fact, there are more roles for men, period: Male characters comprise an overwhelming 71% of all speaking roles in movies, according to a recent study. To wit, eighteen actors banked over $20 million in our scoring period, compared with just four actresses.
Combined, the world’s 20 highest-paid actors earned a whopping $703.5 million between June 1, 2015 and June 1, 2016, before management fees and taxes. That’s more than three times the $205 million tallied by the top 10 highest-paid actresses in the same time frame.
Men in movies can also have longer careers than the top-earning women: 95% of the highest-paid actors are over 40, compared with half of the actresses. The same study found that men fill nearly three quarters of all roles for characters over 40. In our rankings, all of the highest-paid actresses are under 50, while 45% of the actors are 50-plus. In fact, two of the actors on the list, Ford and Amitabh Bachchan, are even in their seventies.
Just missing the cut this year is 64-year-old Liam Neeson, whose earnings dropped below the $15 million barrier to entry. Seth Rogen, Chris Hemsworth and Channing Tatum were among the drop-offs, largely due to quieter years or movies that fell outside our scoring period.
While last year’s ranking evaluated 34 men, this year’s list scaled back to the top 20 to home in on acting’s earning elite. Figures are based on data from Nielsen, BoxOffice Mojo and IMDB, as well as interviews with agents, managers and lawyers.
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