Highest Paid Actresses. What Are They Worth To You?

Forbes released a list of the highest paid actresses a few days ago, tallying earnings between last summer and this one. Have you stopped to think it over? As usual there's not much in the way of specifics as to how they earned the money but it's usually a combo of residuals, new movie deals, and commercial endorsements and the numbers are pre-tax and pre-overhead -- their agents and managers get a chunk of this as does the government. (But you know how kind the government is to millionaires so don't worry for their bank accounts! Millionaires aren't expected to help so the ones with true altruism -- hi Angie! -- are even more lauded for it.)

I used to love all lists as I once interpreted all of them as "people love lists as much as I do!" but now of course it only means "crank up the page views!" . Forbes is especially shameless as you actually have to hit arrows and whatnot an incredible 34 times to read every word of the article! Page View Trickery. I'll save you the trouble. The list is as follows:

1. ANGELINA JOLIE - $30 million
2. SARAH JESSICA PARKER - $30 million
3. JENNIFER ANISTON - $28 million
4. REESE WITHERSPOON -$28 million
5. JULIA ROBERTS - $20 million
6. KRISTEN STEWART -$20 million
7. KATHARINE HEIGL - $19 million
8. CAMERON DIAZ - $18 million
9. SANDRA BULLOCK - $15 million
10. MERYL STREEP - $10 million

On first glance it might seem like a boring list of ubiquitous names but if you stop to consider it offers up a few different career trajectories. You've got your TV stars who leveraged that into massive global fame and then steady film careers  (SJP, HEIGL, ANISTON), you've got a woman who became synonymous with Great Acting (STREEP) early in her career and just refused to vacate her throne, you've got an Otherworldly Movie Queen who seems to belong to the entire world less for her movies than for her celebrity and outreach (JOLIE), you've got the RomCom Queens of the 1990s (ROBERTS, BULLOCK) and their natural successor (WITHERSPOON) who all won Oscars as career honors. [Theory: it's much easier to win an Oscar after RomCom riches than to just win an Oscar due to your dramatic gifts. Discuss!]

And then you've got DIAZ who is sort of in the Roberts/Bullock/Witherspoon school but maybe closer to a Meg Ryan in terms of Hollywood's lack of interest in rewarding her for it (other than monetarily). Finally, you've got a new rock star like franchise queen (STEWART). Will Stewart be able to convert her Twilight fame into a career beyond celibacy-advocate vampirism?

You can't just have a gazillion corporate endorsement print campaigns like Scarlett Johannson or Julianne Moore to name two quick examples, you need to get paid a lot to make the movies that you do make. 

Two things are certain about making it to the top ten.

1. You need to have long hair.
2. If you're not a true original (Streep) and if you haven't slept with Brad Pitt (Aniston and Jolie) it's absolutely crucial to headline romantic blockbusters and/or a single blockbuster franchise. (SJP, Witherspoon, Bullock, Roberts, Diaz, Stewart). 

That covers everyone but Katharine Heigl but maybe you'll have better luck explaining her in the comments.

l i n k

Another day, another several celebrities with new ad campaigns.  Here's Angelina Jolie for Louis Vitton (reportedly she's not wearing any makeup here and wearing her own clothes) and Tobey Maguire for Prada.

How many of them do you think make more money posing for ads than actually acting? Even the ones who command huge actorly paychecks.

oh yes... a few links

Self Styled Siren a fun post on romantic choices, "sleeve tuggers" and The Phantom of the Opera (1943)
Alt Screen celebrates Buster Keaton in College.
Men's Journal spends manly time with Kyle Chandler.
Cinema Blend a retro poster for Captain America: The First Avenger
Super Mercado a fan poster for "The Case" that movie within the movie Super 8

Off Cinema
The Daily Beast thorough critical rundown of new TV season. Pan Am with Christina Ricci sounds great and they say it's sexy, too.
Basket of Kisses roots for Mad Men hard at the inaugural "Critics Choice" for television.
Londonist 8th Annual Naked Bike Ride. This looks like it would hurt. They do some naked bike riding in that Flemish movie The Misfortunates. Have any of you seen that? It's surprisingly affecting, despite being relentlessly sozzled and depressed.

Tony Aftermath
The ratings were up 10%. Yay!
BlogStage has video highlights of the Tonys. I added a couple of these to my live blog in case you're just joining us and want to catch up.
La Daily Musto takes off the blindfold on those Tony related "blind items"... this link is for theater obsessives only, though.
Sarah's Tumblr thought the Tonys were fine but this shirtless photo of Gene Kelly made her night.
Movie|Line thinks the Oscars should take after the Tony Awards. But some of this oft-heard advice is impossible: You can't get rid of the precursors. Oscar has no say in those. They'd have to collapse on their own. Plus, the technicals should not be cut (though maybe the "short film categories" could go without spoiling that it's a night about cinema. Still I like my Oscars long. But they do need to have more spirited presentation. HIRE NEIL PATRICK HARRIS & HUGH JACKMAN AS A DUO. (see also TFE's live blog for their wonder-twin-powered duet)

Thank You From The Birthday Boy.

How old is The Film Experience?

The Film Experience is so old that when we started  Angelina Jolie was more famous for bloody antics (necklace vials, t-shirt scrawls) than for her humanitarian efforts. She had not yet collected or birthed any of those adorable children!

TFE is a dinosaur of the internet, yes, but it's a cute plant-eating one that never did anyone but Hilary Swank any harm! This dinosaur would like to live to see the next stage of human, animal, actress, mutant and movie evolution. You can prevent the meteor of webxtinction by donating just a couple dollars a month. It's like universal health care (TALKING ABOUT MOVIES SAVES LIVES!). If everyone reading pitched in a teensy bit nobody would notice the money and everyone would be healthier and happier and this service they need (heh) would always be available to them.

I promise to shut up about this real soon and thank you if you've already donated. You are the few, the proud, the sexy, the patron saints of The Film Experience community. (Some international readers are having trouble donating and some are not. I'll look into this.)

a cup of coffee : $2.50USD - monthly I'll get the popcorn : $5.00USD - monthly movie ticket on me! : $10.00USD - monthly

I ♥ The Film Experience

If you can spare the price of a cup of coffee (or more if things are good for you financially) once a month, please to consider it. If you're not comfortable with a recurring cup of coffee or tub of popcorn, why not a one time donation. It is Nathaniel's birthday after all... (Yes, I'm shameless. It's 2011) and I have boring needs like: computer maintenance. Example: I have to take both my desktop and my laptop in for maintenance / memory boosting next week.

Those spinny wheels on both Macs are just killing me and the Tek Serve people think my hard drive is going wobbly. Slowing me down soooo much.

BUT WHY DOES TFE NEED MONEY? All websites are free.

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Links: Slayers, Ringers, Tomatoes, Beavers

The blogging police have informed me that if I don't post the "first look" at Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence) from Hunger Games I shall be banished forever from the Billion Kingdoms of the Internet. Satisfied? I guess I should read this book. But how to join the rest of the world in loving teenage killers? It's a gene that skipped me by. Except Buffy. But her victims were vampires so that was always kinda fun.

Tom Shone "An Argument Not Worth Having" via the topic of comedy via Bridesmaids.
Acidemic has a wonderfully fluid train of thought piece on Angelina Jolie's career trajectory and Demi Moore's apocalyptic 80s drama The Seventh Sign.
Go Fug Yourself is happy to see Jodie Foster out and about at Cannes with The Beaver. Except for that one accessory that's always attached to her hand.
The Advocate  enjoyable interview with Rashida Jones (Parks and Recreation and Our Idiot Brother)
Awards Daily Sasha says goodbye to another Cannes

Gallery of the Absurd has a 100% accurate portrait of Stephen King when a new novel idea hits him.
Movie|Line It's true. The Dark Knight Rises has begun filming. Commence endless disposable blogging about what it might be like. Oh wait, that startedback in summer 2008.
Zap2It Buffy or rather Sarah Michelle Gellar is back to series TV on the CW. Ringer, about identical twin sisters and mob targets, has been picked up. First photos follow.

Sarah Michelle Gellar stars in RINGER

Throwing Tomatoes...
Serious Film does not much love Thor. It's one of the more scathing reviews you'll read.

Cheering these movies is beginning to feel like cheering a PowerPoint presentation at a meeting of Marvel stockholders.

Ouch!
Slant Magazine is even more vicious to Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides

April Showers: Angelina's Power Cleanse

Kurt here again. How do you like your Angelina Jolie? Hacking the Gibson under the name of Acid Burn? Wailing about her lost son in a cloche hat? Wooing the Hollywood Foreign Press opposite Johnny Depp in Venice? Please. You like her kicking ass, and with respect to fans of Wanted, she's really never done it better than in Tomb Raider, the underrated video game adap that houses what we can probably call her signature performance.

All of 24 when she shot the movie, Angie wasn't yet Salt skeletal, and still had some of those Gia curves to flaunt. She gets her chance when director Simon West shoots her in a post-training shower scene, where she washes off the sweat worked up from emptying clips into a killer robot.

I love this scene because it's so freaking gratuitous. West might argue that he included it to help humanize Lara Croft (tomb raiders need showers, too!), but we all know it has the same objective as a Maxim cover shoot. And who's arguing, anyway?

I'm still of the mind that Angie is the most perfectly put together female on the globe, and this scene might just mark the peak of that perfectly-put-togetherness.

More More More after the jump.

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