Hollywood Pay Race

Highest-Paid Actors & Actresses

A red-carpet earnings skyline for the actors and actresses at the top of Forbes' annual pay lists.

Ranked by annual earnings Updated 2020 Monthly refresh Hollywood Payday Plaza

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Annual earnings

Highest-Paid Actors & Actresses

2013

Leader Robert Downey Jr.

— George Clooney — —

#5 Dwayne Johnson 46M 46M

— Chris Hemsworth — —

— Ryan Reynolds — —

#1 Robert Downey Jr. 75M 75M

#2 Channing Tatum 60M 60M

#4 Mark Wahlberg 52M 52M

— Bradley Cooper — —

— Scarlett Johansson — —

#3 Hugh Jackman 55M 55M

#7 Adam Sandler 37M 37M

#8 Tom Cruise 35M 35M

— Sandra Bullock — —

#6 Leonardo DiCaprio 39M 39M

— Ben Affleck — —

— Jackie Chan — —

#11 Liam Neeson 32M 32M

— Vin Diesel — —

#12 Jennifer Lawrence 26M 26M

— Will Smith — —

— Matt Damon — —

— Akshay Kumar — —

#9 Denzel Washington 33M 33M

— Christian Bale — —

— Johnny Depp — —

#10 Angelina Jolie 33M 33M

#14 Jennifer Aniston 20M 20M

#15 Emma Stone 16M 16M

#13 Kristen Stewart 22M 22M

— Salman Khan — —

— Amitabh Bachchan — —

— Shah Rukh Khan — —

#16 Charlize Theron 15M 15M

— Gwyneth Paltrow — —

— Melissa McCarthy — —

— Chris Evans — —

— Fan Bingbing — —

— Sofía Vergara — —

— Paul Rudd — —

— Amy Adams — —

— Reese Witherspoon — —

— Julia Roberts — —

— Lin-Manuel Miranda — —

— Nicole Kidman — —

— Kaley Cuoco — —

— Mila Kunis — —

— Emma Watson — —

— Gal Gadot — —

— Meryl Streep — —

— Emily Blunt — —

2013 - 2020 Annual earnings

Visualized by dat.city

Rows shown Zoom Range start 2013 Range end 2020 Logo speed Logo opacity Bar opacity Name size Max chars Value size

Latest ranking

2020

Annual earnings

#1 Dwayne Johnson 87.5M

#2 Ryan Reynolds 71.5M

#3 Mark Wahlberg 58M

#4 Ben Affleck 55M

#5 Vin Diesel 54M

#6 Akshay Kumar 48.5M

#7 Lin-Manuel Miranda 45.5M

#8 Will Smith 44.5M

#9 Sofía Vergara 43M

#10 Adam Sandler 41M

#11 Jackie Chan 40M

#12 Angelina Jolie 35.5M

#13 Gal Gadot 31.5M

#14 Melissa McCarthy 25M

#15 Meryl Streep 24M

Timeline

Key moments

2013
Robert Downey Jr. leads Hollywood pay in 2013
2017
Mark Wahlberg leads Hollywood pay in 2017
2020
Dwayne Johnson leads Hollywood pay in 2020

Notes

Methodology

This StoryOps adapter combines Forbes' annual 'world's highest-paid actors' and 'highest-paid actresses' rankings into one earnings leaderboard per year, re-ranking every listed performer by their published Forbes estimate. The yearly sequence is the historical backfill, so the race chart animates real year-over-year pay movement across Hollywood; portraits are enriched from Wikipedia.

Combined Forbes highest-paid actors and actresses earnings for 2013-2020 (8 annual frames). Each figure is Forbes' published pre-tax trailing-12-month estimate in USD; the two gendered lists are merged and re-ranked by earnings. Forbes did not publish comparable lists for every earlier year, so verified coverage begins in 2013.

Reference

Sources

Forbes list of the world's highest-paid actors — Forbes
Forbes list of the world's highest-paid actresses — Forbes
List of highest-paid film actors — Wikipedia