25 Movie Stars Who Were Overpaid Despite Doing Very Little

Voice actors can actually get paid a LOT for very little work, especially if they’re already massive celebrities or it’s for a successful franchise. Cameron Diaz once told Ellen Degeneres that her voice acting for Shrek 2 took only two five-hour days.

For 10 hours of work, she made a reported $10 million. That’s $1 million per hour of work.

Harry Styles was reportedly paid $380,000 for his after-credits scene in Eternals. The scene is about a minute long.

Another actor not to appear until the verrrryy end of a film is Mark Hamill in Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens. Despite not saying a word, Hamill earned a reported $1–3 million.

Sticking with Star Wars, Alec Guinness made around $95 million for his 20-minute role in A New Hope throughout his life. This was because he’d negotiated 2.25% of the backend grosses — as the series went on to become uber-successful, this amounted to millions and millions of dollars.

Julia Roberts similarly negotiated a backend deal for Valentine’s Day. She got $3 million upfront but negotiated for 3% of the backend profits. She was barely in the film; As Vulture points out, her role was “little more than an extended cameo” during which she made $11,952 per word, or $8,333 per second of screen time (most of which was spent just sitting on a plane). However, this was just with the upfront profits — her eventual profits totaled around $14 million.

She was not so lucky for Mother’s Day. While she also received $3 million upfront, she did not negotiate a backend deal. Still, the role only required four days of filming — meaning she received $750,000 per day.

Despite only appearing in the beginning of Trainwreck (in three scenes), John Cena made a reported $2.5 million.

Similarly, Jennifer Lawrence only appeared in the beginning of the film Dark Phoenix — however, she apparently made a reported $4.7 million, even more than Sophie Turner, the star of the film.

Anne Hathaway is famous for winning an Oscar for Les Misérables, despite only being in the film for 15 minutes. However, she didn’t just get an Oscar out of it — she also got a reported $10 million.

This isn’t quite as extreme, but she also got a reported $7.5 million for appearing in about 19 minutes of The Dark Knight Rises.

Jared Leto reportedly received $7 million for appearing in Suicide Squad. However, despite his high salary and overhyped performance, he actually only appeared in a couple scenes in the entire film — totaling, as one Reddit user found, a little over seven minutes.

Similarly, Zendaya only appeared in about seven minutes of Dune, despite doing a ton of press for the film. She wasn’t paid quite as much as Leto — but was still paid a reported $300,000 for these seven minutes.

There really seems to be a theme of seven minutes — Cher appeared in Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again for about seven minutes, and was paid a reported $1 million.

And Meryl Streep — whose character is dead in the film, and only appears in about five minutes — was reportedly paid $3 million.

Robert Downey Jr. may have felt like a prominent part of Spider-Man: Homecoming. However, all in all, his screen time only added up to under eight minutes. He earned a reported $10 million salary.

Vin Diesel’s character, Groot, has certainly appeared onscreen for more than eight minutes, but Groot only has one line he’s capable of saying: “I am Groot.”

And as it turns out, Vin Diesel has made a pretty obscene amount of money just saying this sentence in different voices: $54.5 million, reportedly.

Mark Wahlberg infamously made $1.5 million for the 10-day All The Money in the World reshoot (which occurred because Christopher Plummer had been cast to re-film Kevin Spacey’s role a month before the film released). It’s unclear exactly how much work he did in those ten days (or if he worked all of them), but he was paid far more than costar Michelle Williams, who was paid just under $1,000 for the 10-day reshoot.

Wahlberg later donated his salary to Time’s Up in Williams’ name.

Tom Felton reportedly made $14 million overall on the Harry Potter films — despite appearing in only 31 minutes total, over all the films.

Johnny Depp seemed like he’d be one of the stars of Alice in Wonderland based on marketing, but his character actually only appeared in under seven minutes, according to a YouTube compliation. He reportedly made 50 million pounds.

In a more wild example, Depp was paid his full $16 million salary for Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore. He didn’t even appear in the film — he was replaced by Mads Mikkelsen. He had only shot one scene before being replaced.

Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Samuel L Jackson’s characters die about 15 minutes into The Other Guys. Johnson made a reported $9 million for his role.

No word on how much Jackson was paid, but sources have reported he regularly earns over $10 million on his films.

Marlon Brando made $3.7 million, along with 11.75 percent of backend profits, for appearing in Superman. He worked for 13 days and appeared onscreen for under 20 minutes.

The film’s star, Christopher Reeve, only earned $250,000.

And finally, Arnold Schwarzenegger was paid $25 million for his work on Batman and Robin. He worked for 25 days — meaning he was paid a million per day.

George Clooney, the star of the film, was paid $1 million total, in contrast.

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