14 DAY TRIAL // It might seem hard to believe since she’s still America’s sweetheart and her face on any magazine cover moves copies by the thousands regardless of the country in which it’s released, but Jennifer Aniston isn’t such a hit at the box office. She’s just landed on Forbes’ annual list of most overpaid actors again.
To her credit, at least she didn’t rank first. In fact, she didn’t even make it in the top 5 positions, because she was lucky to have had several supporting roles in hit comedies that actually fared better than films in which she played lead.
Still, Forbes notes, for someone who’s so incredibly famous and popular (and even considered A-list), Jennifer is sure proving unpopular at the box office, at least when compared to the kind of paycheck she can still command.
“To compile our list we looked at the last three movies each actor starred in over the three years to June 1. Actors don’t make as many films as they used to so that first criteria eliminated a lot of folks right away. Drew Barrymore, who has appeared on our overpaid list in past years, was disqualified this year because she didn’t have enough films in our time frame,” the publication says of the criteria used for the list.
“Looking at pay, movie budgets and expenses, we calculated a return on investment number for each star and then averaged those numbers to get an overall return,” Forbes adds.
This might come as a shock, but Adam Sandler can still command a paycheck north of $15 million (€10.9 million) for a single movie – and there are not too many actors who can boast of this “ability.” Strangely enough, for every dollar (€0.73) he was paid, in 2013, he returned a mere $3.40 (€2.47), so he tops this year’s list from Forbes as the most overpaid actor for the year that’s about to end.
He’s in select company, so at least he has that. On the second spot, we find Katherine Heigl, once considered the new rom-com queen, one that actually had chances of being the “new” Jennifer Aniston. That didn’t quite go as planned.
The rest of the chart is comprised as follows: Reese Witherspoon (who stands good odds of turning things around soon because she’s been focusing a lot on her own production house), Nicolas Cage, Kevin James, Denzel Washington, Steve Carrell, Aniston, Matt Damon, and Ryan Reynolds.
Whereas Cage and Reynolds are fixtures on this list by now, James and Carrell are newcomers this year, one thanks to “Here Comes the Boom” and the other because of “The Incredible Burt Wonderstone,” both comedies that disappointed at the box office.