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Revealed: Hollywood’s top paid actor and actress

The numbers are in and we now know the highest paid actor and actress… and only one is up for an Oscar. (Getty Images)

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The numbers are in and we now know the highest paid actor and actress… and only one is up for an Oscar.


While the awards may not seem as relevant as they once were when movie theaters and the box office dictated a film’s success, the race is still on and all of Hollywood is craving their golden statuette.

The winner of the golden man gets cache, top picks for scripts, and of course, a pay bump. According to Business Insider, “Talent agents and managers estimate that their clients will get a 20% boost in pay for their next film if they win the award for Best Actor or Actress.”

And that doesn’t include whether the headliner is a producer of the film – if they are, they get instant cash gratitude when people flock to see (or re-see) the winning movie.

But this year is an odd one. According to Forbes, comedian Adam Sandler is the highest-paid actor for the year, raking in $73 million for four movies on Netflix.

Sandler’s straight-to-streaming movies “Murder Mystery 2,” “You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah,” “Leo” and “Spaceman,” didn’t make waves in the media (I am hard-pressed to remember any of them), but with his Netflix deal, Sandler is laughing all the way to the bank.

Meanwhile, Margot Robbie is the highest-paid actress of the year, making $59 million for the ubiquitous “Barbie.” And while Robbie’s pay is stratospheric, “Barbie” made over $1 billion in box office sales (which, unlike Netflix, we can track), and thus seems paltry, as Robbie not only starred in the movie but also produced it.

Not to mention, Robbie also starred in “Asteroid City” this year. Regardless, her take-home pay is still 20% lower than Sandler’s, which is right in line with the 20% national wage gap between men and women. According to the Center for American Progess, “New data show that in 2022, women working full time, year-round typically earned 84 cents for every dollar men made, and when comparing among all workers, including those who work part-time and for part of the year, women typically made 78 cents.” It’s ironic, as for all its talk on equal pay, women’s rights and #MeToo, Hollywood is still a man’s world.