Who was the first actor to earn $100m from one movie?
There are a lot of people in Hollywood who are paid lucrative salaries, with the likes of Chris Pratt and Millie Bobby Brown being paid obscene amounts of money to make more Netflix trash that absolutely no one cares about. Robert Downey Junior is looking at a pay cheque of $100 million for his upcoming reprisal of Doctor Doom, all while there are editors working on Marvel movies who are paid little more than $13 an hour to keep up with the increasing number of special effects needed.
Some actors are earning enough to buy multiple houses and disposable designer underwear, while the wealth inequality in the industry only became more obvious after the strikes last year, in which crew members and actors fought for better wages and residuals. With the rise of streaming services, many actors have highlighted how they are not paid for the continuous distribution of their image, with actor of the past being given yearly cheques depending on how many people had watched the show. Companies like Netflix can keep getting richer from these shows, while the actors receive nothing to show for this.
However, it has always been a business of inequality, with some people quickly soaring to the top and dominating the rest of the industry, while others scramble at the bottom and look for any way to survive. While the salaries for top dogs seem to keep getting bigger, there was one film that perhaps set the precedent for this, with the lead star becoming the first to earn $100m from a single role.
The ‘90s were a pivotal time in Hollywood, with an equal demand for the work of independent directors as well as huge technological advancements that made commercial films much bigger. Films like Titanic and Pulp Fiction found equal success with fans and critics, despite being made for very different budgets and from very different directors.
The industry grew in a way that hadn’t been seen before, with huge blockbusters and indie dramas proving the demand for a wide range of stories, leading to more projects and a period that was packed with variety. As a result, there was more work going around for the people who stared in them, with Bruce Willis experiencing a unique kind of success after becoming the first actor to earn $100m from one movie after starring in The Sixth Sense.
Directed by M Night Shyamalan, the film follows a child psychologist who helps a haunted child who claims he can see and talk to dead people. It instantly became a hit, grossing over $672m worldwide and leading everyone involved to become an overnight success after the surprise twist ending and iconic delivery of lines like “I see dead people”.
But perhaps the biggest takeaway was the new potential for actors to earn huge salaries that went into the multiple millions, with future actors like Keanu Reeves and Tom Cruise shortly following in his footsteps with colossal salaries for Mission: Impossible 2 and The Matrix Reloaded. It seems that this trend has only continued into recent years, despite the fact that this no longer ensures quality of work, with increasingly terrible films becoming huge earners for people who sadly possess very little talent or passion for cinema.
