Ryan Gosling, Tom Cruise and Adam Sandler Secure Places in Top 10 Highest Earning Actors in Hollywood
- 2023 will always be remembered for Barbenheimer, but many other movies took the screens.
- Actors like Ryan Gosling, Tom Cruise and Adam Sandler are among the highest paid actors.
- Margot Robbie is the youngest actress and also one of the only two actresses on this list.
Ryan Gosling might be just Ken, but that alone has earned him several prestigious accolades and secured his place as one of Hollywood’s highest-earning actors in 2024. Besides his Barbie co-star Margot Robbie, he shares this honor with other A-listers like Tom Cruise and Adam Sandler.
2023 will always be remembered for the cultural phenomenon of ‘Barbenheimer,’ sparked by the simultaneous release of Greta Gerwig’s Barbie and Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer. Even after multiple viewings of these blockbusters, audiences found time for other hits like Tom Cruise’s Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part 1 and Adam Sandler’s Murder Mystery 2. According to Forbes, these films, among others, helped propel 10 actors to become Hollywood’s highest earners.
Adam Sandler
With the release of 3 Netflix films and more than 40 stand-up comedy tour dates in 2023, Adam Sandler had quite the year. Considering how hard he worked last year, it seems only fair that he was the highest earner with a whopping $73 million.
The success of the Murder Mystery sequel played a huge role in Sandler’s paycheck being this big. Subsequently, the movies You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah and the animated feature Leo also contributed to his success. Not to mention the many comedy shows he did, and the movie The Out-Laws, which he produced through his production company Happy Madison Productions.
Margot Robbie
Barbie really is everything. That is why Margot Robbie who played the character in the titular blockbuster last year, is the youngest person on the highest-paid actors list by a decade. She earned $59 million last year, placing her well ahead of her contemporaries and on par with many actors over 52—all while being only 33 (as of last year).
Barbie, released in July, earned approximately $1.45 billion (via Box Office Mojo). As the leading actor and producer of the movie, Forbes stated that she earned 12.5% of all back-end profit which is estimated to be around $60 million. In addition to this, her production company LuckyChap Entertainment also produced the much-acclaimed satire, Saltburn.
Tom Cruise
It’s almost impossible for a Tom Cruise-led movie to be released in a year without him ranking among the top-paid actors. Despite Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part 1 facing tough competition from Barbie and Oppenheimer last year, it performed well at the box office and secured Cruise the third spot on this list with a $45 million paycheck.
The Eyes Wide Shut star is one of the very last movie stars who can still command the vaunted ‘first-dollar gross’ deal. This deal implies that he gets a percentage of the movie’s box office collection and other revenues since the day it is released. This added to the profits he gets from the on-demand and streaming of 2022’s Top Gun: Maverick made him one of the highest-paid actors at 61.
Ryan Gosling
Ryan Gosling has landed the fourth spot on this list with a big payday of $43 million from his supporting role of Ken in Barbie, which also earned him an Oscar nomination. His passionate ballad from the movie, I’m Just Ken has been streamed over 100 million times on Spotify.
Gosling, although a decade older than Robbie, is still one of the youngest actors to have achieved this feat. He has made a name for himself in Hollywood with movies like La La Land and Blade Runner 2049 and is living up to the bar he has set for himself with these great performances.
Matt Damon
In addition to the supporting role Matt Damon had in Oppenheimer, he also produced the film Air with his best friend Ben Affleck through their production company Artists Equity. Consequently, Damon is the fifth actor on this list with a grand paycheck of $43 million.
Best known for the Bourne franchise and Good Will Hunting, Damon took a significant pay cut for Oppenheimer, earning $4 million upfront, which is less than his usual paychecks. However, he negotiated a small percentage of the film’s profits in return.
Jennifer Aniston
With a paycheck of $42 million, Jennifer Aniston is the only other actress who is on the list of highest-paid stars. Her residuals from FRIENDS alone ensure that she has to never struggle for a job again like her beloved character from the show, Rachel Green, and yet she continues to work her magic at the box office.
In addition to her starring role in Murder Mystery 2 alongside Adam Sandler, she reportedly earned as much as $2 million for acting and executive producing each episode of The Morning Show on AppleTV+. Besides these endeavors, she also promoted brands like Vital Proteins, Uber Eats, and her own haircare line, LolaVie.
Leonardo DiCaprio
It is not every year that a movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio is released, but when it does, best believe that he is going to nail it. His film Killers of the Flower Moon was not any different and earned him $41 million from the box office collection as well as the film’s streaming revenues from Apple TV+.
DiCaprio was snubbed at the Academy Awards, but the Martin Scorsese feature at least did his bank account well. This was one of his several collaborations with the legendary filmmakers and also Scorsese’s other major collaborator, Robert De Niro.
Jason Statham
2023 was quite the year for the fans of Jason Statham who starred in not one or two, but four movies. Three of these movies, Fast X, Meg 2: The Trench, and Expend4bles, were installments of major big-budget franchises. This effectively put him in the eighth position on this list with $41 million.
Statham has been fighting his way through Hollywood for over two decades now and he is not showing signs of stopping anytime soon. 2024 saw him lead and produce the high-grossing action thriller, The Beekeeper, and the next year, he will appear in David Ayer’s A Working Man.
Ben Affleck
Ben Affleck didn’t earn much from his roles in Hypnotic and The Flash, the latter being a box office flop. However, as the CEO of the studio startup Artists Equity—where Matt Damon serves as Chief Creative Officer—he made millions from the biographical sports drama Air.
Affleck rose to fame as the actor and co-scriptwriter of the film Good Will Hunting, for which he and Damon won an Academy Award. 2024 mostly saw him in the headlines for his relationship with Jennifer Lopez, from whom he has separated.
Denzel Washington
Denzel Washington is not only the only Black actor to be on this list but also the oldest one. The release of the third installment of the Equalizer franchise put him among the highest-paid actors even if he is in the tenth position with a $24 million paycheck.
Considering Washington has been in the industry for over four decades, he definitely earns enough revenue from his past projects to not have to work anymore. Even so, this year, he appeared in the much-awaited sequel, Gladiator II, and will also be starring in Spike Lee’s next film, Highest to Lowest.
