Movies

What Was The Highest Salary For The Role Ever, And Who Received It?

What Was The Highest Salary For The Role Ever, And Who Received It?
Image credit: Legion-Media

Big-name actors famously earn a whole lot of money for their roles, but have you ever wondered who of them bagged the most cash for a single movie?

Hollywood studios are generous toward those who can bring big money their way.

The more famous the actor, the more gargantuan their salary per movie can be; some titans' pay consists of eight figures by default, and they won't lift a finger unless the number of zeros in their cheque is sufficient.

The logic checks out: typically, people go to the cinema if they're familiar with a certain cast member or the director of a picture.

Between all the big salary news, it's hard to realize what the baseline for top-tier actors is, and who's the real cash-bringer of Hollywood. But we got you.

Some of the world's most famous franchises made their actors immensely rich, but let's ignore them for a while: franchises take years, sometimes even decades to film.

Instead, let's answer the question "What's the biggest cheque one actor earned for only one movie?" as it's even more impressive.

To date, the most money an actor has earned from one movie is a staggering $120M. Bruce Willis bagged it for his main role in The Sixth Sense, but the pay didn't only consist of his base salary.

The actor's base salary was $14M, which is impressive in itself, but he didn't stop there.

When negotiating the terms, Bruce Willis convinced the studio to give him a whopping 17 % of The Sixth Sense's gross revenue, and this proved to be a fantastic financial decision for him as the movie became a smash hit.

The Sixth Sense earned $670 million worldwide and put an additional $106M into Willis's bank account, bringing him up to $120M in total.

But on top of that, the actor also negotiated himself a $400K allowance and a $450K jet as if the rest of the sum wasn't enough.

This made Bruce Willis the record-breaker: since The Sixth Sense came out back in 1999, no one has managed to get more money for one movie.

The closest anyone's got to his record was $100M for a movie. Tom Cruise earned that sum for War of the Worlds, and Will Smith received a $100M paycheck for his role in Men in Black 3.

Source: Celebrity Net Worth