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Top 10 Times Actors Made $1,000,000 A MINUTE

Top 10 Times Actors Made $1,000,000 A MINUTE
VOICE OVER: Patrick Mealey WRITTEN BY: Jesse Singer
These actors made bank for a very little amount of work. For this list, we'll be looking at the highest-grossing actors whose work on a movie reportedly earned them astronomical amounts of money. Our countdown includes Julia Roberts, Jared Leto, Robert Downey Jr., and more!

Top 10 Times Actors Who Got Paid a Million Dollars a Minute


Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we’re counting down our picks for the Top 10 Times Actors Who Got Paid a Million Dollars a Minute.

For this list, we’ll be looking at the highest-grossing actors whose work on a movie reportedly earned them astronomical amounts of money.

Do you have a minute? We can’t pay you a million dollars, but we’d love it if you let us know what you think of these big payday performances.

#10: Julia Roberts

“Valentine's Day” (2010)
2010’s “Valentine’s Day” has an 18% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and Time magazine called it one of the top 10 worst chick flicks. But you know who loved the movie? Moviegoers, who made it a $200+ million box office hit, and Julia Roberts, who was paid $3 million for a quick cameo. A cameo that involved sitting on an airplane for six minutes next to Bradley Cooper - something most of us would pay $3 million to do! Those of you who are quick at math might be eagerly shouting at you screens, “but, wait! $3 million for 6 minutes of screen time? That’s only $500,000/minute!” You’d be correct, however, her contract also included a percentage of the film’s gross - which actually made her total around 14 million.

#9: Will Smith

“Men in Black 3” (2012)
While Will Smith probably wishes he could use one of those memory erasers to forget a few things he’s done, we bet making “Men in Black 3” definitely isn’t one of them. Given that they’re in so much of the movie, it’s hard to imagine the star of a film making a million dollars a minute, but that’s exactly what Smith did with “MIB3.” Will Smith landed one of the biggest single-movie paydays in history, taking home $100 million for his work. While we don’t know his exact number of screentime, the film itself is only 106 minutes, so a $1 million/minute seems like pretty fair odds.

#8: Johnny Depp

“Alice in Wonderland” (2010)
Why is a raven like a writing desk? While you try and figure that one out, allow us to tell you about how Johnny Depp made more than one million dollars a minute from 2010’s “Alice in Wonderland”. While it’s unclear what his base salary was, it’s been rumored that, because of how much of a success the movie turned out to be, Depp actually walked away with something like $68 million. His entire time on screen totals around 7 minutes so, while we haven’t yet solved the Mad Hatter’s riddle, we know one thing: That was one profitable tea party!

#7: Marlon Brando

“Superman” (1978)
These days, superhero movies are some of the biggest money makers in Hollywood. However, back in 1978, that was definitely not the case, and the “Superman” producers needed a big name star to get their movie off the ground. Not only did they get a big name, they got one of the biggest in the business: Marlon Brando! Of course, he didn’t come cheap. Brando was given a deal that, even then, was deemed unprecedented. Brando’s $3.7 million salary for about 12 days work and less than 20 minutes of screen time is certainly impressive, but especially so for 1978. However, it was his 11.75% backend that makes the deal list-worthy, as the final number ended up being around $19 million.

#6: Alec Guinness

“Star Wars” (1977)
Obi-Wan Kenobi is on screen for about 20 minutes in “Star Wars”, and Alec Guinness was said to have been paid $150,000 for the role. Nothing to scoff at for sure, but it was his negotiating of 2% of the backend grosses that turned his deal from unscoffable to unbelievable (George Lucas even threw in an extra quarter percent to make it 2.25%). Guinness had been anticipating another 100,000 pounds from these profits. And, he couldn’t have been more wrong. “Star Wars” was an industry-altering hit, and while this deal earned Guinness a nice $7 million right off the bat, over the ensuing years that 2.25% translated into a whopping $95 million!

#5: Jared Leto

“Suicide Squad” (2016)
After taking home the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for 2013’s “Dallas Buyers Club,” we bet Jared Leto had quite a lot of negotiating power going into playing the role of the Joker in “Suicide Squad”. He would have used it to get himself a pretty payday worth $7 million for the role. Now, that's certainly less than some of his co-stars - namely Will Smith, who was paid $20 million to play Deadshot. However, given that Leto’s screen time in the movie only amounts to about 7 minutes, the role put him at exactly $1 million per minute. And that’s no joke!

#4: Mark Hamill

“Star Wars: The Force Awakens” (2015)
Mark Hamill was a relatively unknown actor back in 1977 when he made his film debut as Luke Skywalker in the first “Star Wars” movie. For his troubles, he was paid $650,000. Cut to 38 years later, the “Star Wars” franchise is a worldwide phenomenon and Mark Hamill as Luke Skywalker is one of the most recognizable and popular film characters of all time. So much so that Hamil was paid between $1-3 million to appear at the end of ​​“Star Wars: The Force Awakens”. And when we say “end,” we’re talking, like, the last minute or so and he’s not even on screen for the entirety of it! The force is definitely with him.

#3: Ving Rhames

“Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol” (2011)
Talk about more for less. Ving Rhames was paid $3.5 million dollars to play IMF agent Luther Stickell in the third “Mission impossible” film, which aired in 2006. Cut to five years later and Rhames is back for “Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol”, except this time, he has one scene at the end of the movie, a few lines of dialogue and not even a full minute of screen time. And how much did that not-even-a-minute cost producers? Apparently, Rhames was compensated a mega $7.7 million! To that we say… Mission Accomplished!

#2: Robert Downey Jr.

“Spider-Man: Homecoming” (2017)
Robert Downey Jr. was paid $500,000 (and some backend percentage) to take on the role of Tony Stark in the first “Iron Man” movie. It might not sound like a lot compared to others on this list - but it was oh-so worth it! The film was a massive hit, and it not only jump started the MCU, it also reestablished Downey as one of the greatest actors out there. He became one of the biggest movie stars in the world, as well as one of the most important members of the MCU. So important, in fact, that he was endowed with $10 million to show up in “Spider-Man: Homecoming” for what a Marvel reddit thread calculated was exactly 8 minutes and 31 seconds of screen time.

#1: George Clooney

“Gravity” (2013)
Because his role involved such a key dramatic moment in the film, you might forget that George Clooney wasn’t actually in “Gravity” for all that long. In total, Clooney’s screen time on the film comes to about 18 minutes of the film’s 91 minute runtime. But, while his time on screen wasn’t huge, his salary for the film kinda was. That is, if you consider $20 million dollars huge? And that doesn’t even take into account the percentage of profits he negotiated, which earned him another $14 million on top of that. Although, he would have made our list even without it.
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