Eddie Murphy and Drew Barrymore Lead Hollywood's 'Most Overpaid Stars' List
Drew Barrymore tops the list of Forbes’ Hollywood’s Most Overpaid Stars. It was reported by the magazine that Barrymore’s films earn just 40 cents for every dollar she is paid.
Although many may find Drew Barrymore adorable, her latest films have performed terrible at the box office. Her latest two films 2009’s Everybody’s Fine and 2007’s Lucky You, earned $16 million and $8 million, respectively.
Coming in at number two, is Eddie Murphy, whose movies made $2.70 for every dollar he was paid. The lists comes just as Murphy’s latest film, Tower Heist, debuted at number two in the box office, losing out to the DreamWorks animated film Puss in Boots.
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Forbes created the list using the 40 highest-earning actors in Hollywood. In order for the actor to qualify, each actor would have had to star in at least three movies in the past five years that opened in more than 500 theaters. In the case of Eddie Murphy, Shrek movies did not count, because the stars are not the central draw in animation films.
Forbes also used data collected from their annual Celebrity 100 list to calculate the stars’ estimated earnings on each film (including up-front pay and any earnings from the movie’s box-office receipts and first year sales of DVDs).
Forbes then calculated each movie’s estimated budget and box-office and DVD earnings to figure out an operating income for each film.
According to Forbes, they “added up each star’s compensation on his or her last three films and the operating income on those films, and divided total operating income by the star’s total compensation to come up with a return-on-investment number. The final number represents an average of how much a studio earns for every dollar paid.”
