Leonardo DiCaprio Gets $5 Million for Phone Ad

It pays to be a star: Leonardo DiCaprio is not making millions just by carefully negotiating his movie deals, but also thanks to very lucrative endorsement deals. The latest nets him $5 million for just one ad that will air in Asia only.

Though it’s not uncommon for celebrities to rake in the big buck with endorsement deals, the likes of DiCaprio, George Clooney, Brad Pitt or Julia Roberts are always certain to make record amounts for very little work.

Sometime this spring, Leo will be flying to China to shoot a commercial for a cell phone company – and he’ll come back $5 million richer, E! Online reports.

“E! News has learned exclusively that DiCaprio has agreed to shoot a TV commercial for a Chinese cell phone company that will pay him $5 million,” says the e-zine.

Admittedly, this is DiCaprio’s most lucrative one-off endorsement deal to date – that we know of, one might as well add.

“The commercial, for the Guangdong OPPO Mobile Telecommunications Corp., is scheduled to be shot in April and will run in Asia later this year,” E! says.

However, the e-zine points out, that’s not to say DiCaprio is not used to making lots of money off endorsement deals: he also did ads for luxury watch-maker Tag Heuer and for Suzuki.

The actor’s rep refused to comment on the report.

Assuming it’s true, Julia Roberts still has a long way to go until she’s able to command this kind of paycheck, though she’s not really working for peanuts either.

In November last year, Italian coffee brand Lavazza paid the “Pretty Woman” star the whopping amount of €1.2 million (approximately $1.7 million) for a 45-second ad in which she doesn’t even utter a single word, as we also informed you at the time.

Before that, for her 6-minute cameo in the critically-panned “Valentine’s Day,” Roberts made $3 million: $500,000 for every minute of screentime.