Dwayne Johnson is considered as the highest paid male actor for 2 years in a row. Forbes stated that the former wrestler has earned $89.4M in the last twelve months thanks to his roles HBO’s Ballers, Fast & Furious Hobbs and Shaw, and Skyscraper. He earned $700,000 per episode on HBO’s Ballers. A huge portion of his wealth is down to the lucrative back-end deal, which sees him earning up to 15% of box office from all of his films.
The actor also picks up his biggest payday upfront with Jumanji: The Next Level, which made him earn $23.5M. In 2020, he will also be seen in Jungle Cruise, a Disney adventure film. What makes him different from other actors is that he always prioritizes his audience. He told Forbes that it should be audience first to make them happy and give them the best.
While the deal of Johnson is the biggest in the industry, he is not just the only one with a huge deal. Robert Downey Jr. also got $20M upfront and nearly 8 percent of the pool for portraying Iron Man and this amounted to $55M for his work in Avengers: Endgame, the film that grossed $2.796B at the box office. This gross was very big that it also secured spots on other top earners including Chris Hemsworth, Paul Rudd, and Bradley Cooper. Together, they have earned $284M with the franchise.
Celebrities including Scarlet Johansson and Downey have extreme leverage to demand huge compensation packages from the studios investing hundreds of millions of dollars in creating tent-pole films like the Avengers series. With the success of film, a lot of actors have gained huge earnings.
Bradley Cooper is a rare actor who may thank a bet on himself because of his ranking this 2019. He earned only about ten percent of his $57M payday for voicing Avengers’ Rocket Raccoon. 70% came from the movie A Star is Born, which is a small musical drama that he produced, directed, co-wrote, and starred with the singer Lady Gaga. The movie was actually a passion project for Cooper and he forfeited upfront salary to go in the film and the salary of Gaga. It was worth it. The movie that had only $36M production budget has grossed to $435M across the globe, which leave Cooper with about $40M.
The estimates of the earnings are based on the data from IMDB, Box Office Mojo, ComScore, Nielsen, and other interviews with the industry insiders. All of the figures are pretax and the fees for lawyers, managers, and agents are not deducted.
Below are the top highest paid actors of 2019 in the world:
- Dwayne Johnson -$89.4M earnings
- Chris Hemsworth – $76.4M earnings
- Robert Downey Jr – $66M earnings
- Akshay Kumar – $65M earnings
- Jackie Chan – $58M earnings
- Bradley Cooper – $57M earnings
- Adam Sandler – $57M earnings
- Chris Evans – $43.5M earnings
- Paul Rudd – $41M earnings
- Will Smith- $35M earnings