The Highest Paid Hollywood Actors and Actresses of 2025
Adam Sandler earned $48 million in 2025, more than any other actor on the planet. Two years earlier he earned $73 million for the same first-place finish on the same list. Nothing went wrong in between. The prize at the top of movie stardom simply got smaller.
Forbes published its ranking of the highest paid actors of 2025 on March 17, 2026, counting calendar-year earnings net of representation fees. All the figures below are in U.S. dollars, and all of them are annual totals rather than salaries for any single film.
Read the list from the top and the interesting part is not the names. It is who signs the cheques. Six of the ten are paid, in whole or in large part, out of the content budgets of Netflix, Apple and Amazon, on money committed in advance regardless of how the finished work performs. The two men still earning the old way, a share of ticket revenue from the first dollar a film takes, are both in their sixties. And the pool itself is contracting: the top twenty earned $590 million between them in 2025, down roughly 20 per cent from $730 million a year earlier.
The ten highest paid actors of 2025 at a glance
| Rank | Actor | 2025 earnings | Where the money came from |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Adam Sandler | $48 million | Netflix deal (Happy Gilmore 2, Jay Kelly) |
| 2 | Tom Cruise | $46 million | Theatrical gross share (Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning) |
| 3 | Mark Wahlberg | $44 million | Apple and Amazon films, producer fees, music royalties |
| 4 | Scarlett Johansson | $43 million | Theatrical (Jurassic World Rebirth), plus directing |
| 5 | Brad Pitt | $41 million | Theatrical gross share (F1, made for Apple) |
| 6 | Denzel Washington | $38 million | Broadway (Othello) and Highest 2 Lowest |
| 7 (tie) | Jack Black | $28 million | A Minecraft Movie |
| 7 (tie) | Jason Momoa | $28 million | A Minecraft Movie and Chief of War (Apple TV+) |
| 9 | Daniel Craig | $27 million | Netflix buyout instalment (Wake Up Dead Man) |
| 10 | Millie Bobby Brown | $26 million | Netflix (The Electric State, Stranger Things, Enola Holmes) |
10. Millie Bobby Brown — $26 million
At 22, Brown is the youngest actor to make this list in two decades. Her entire earnings year came from one buyer. She led The Electric State in March 2025, the Russo brothers film carrying a reported budget of around $320 million, which ranks it among the most expensive Netflix has ever made. She followed it with season five of Stranger Things, released in three parts on November 26, December 25 and December 31, and she has a third Enola Holmes film completed for the same company.
The Electric State did not work by Netflix’s own metrics. Brown made the list anyway. Those two sentences side by side are the shape of the modern star deal in miniature, because committed streamer money is uncorrelated with how the finished work lands.
There is one wrinkle worth noting. The Stranger Things finale played in roughly 600 cinemas over New Year’s and took more than $25 million at the box office, a genuine theatrical result attached to a streaming series. It is the exception that shows how thoroughly the rest of her year sat outside the ticket economy.
9. Daniel Craig — $27 million
Craig’s year was the third Benoit Blanc mystery. Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery played a limited theatrical run from November 26, 2025 and arrived on Netflix on December 12, where it debuted at number one on the service’s film chart.
The pay behind it was agreed years before the film existed. Netflix reportedly paid $469 million for the two Knives Out sequels in 2021, a deal under which Craig, director Rian Johnson and producer Ram Bergman each stood to earn upwards of $100 million. What Forbes counted for 2025 is an instalment of that buyout.
This is the clearest look the list offers at what a buyout does to an actor’s economics, because the size of the deal, the year it was signed and the year it paid are all on the record at once. The price was fixed in advance for a package of two films nobody had made yet, so the 2025 cheque arrived on a schedule rather than on a result.
7 (tie). Jack Black — $28 million
A Minecraft Movie opened in April 2025 and grossed about $961 million worldwide. Its $157 million domestic opening weekend was among the largest of the year. No film connected to anyone on this list grossed more.
Hold that against the rest of the ranking for a moment. Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning took about $595 million, roughly 38 per cent less, and paid Tom Cruise $46 million. Black finished seventh at $28 million on the bigger film. The gap is not about audience size. It is about the structure of the contract, and only two people on this entire list still hold the kind that turns ticket sales directly into personal income.
7 (tie). Jason Momoa — $28 million
Momoa shared the Minecraft payday with Black and lands on exactly the same figure, but he got there by two routes. The second was Chief of War, which premiered on Apple TV+ on August 1, 2025. It is a nine-episode drama about the unification of Hawaii with a predominantly Polynesian cast, and Momoa co-created it, co-wrote it, executive produced it and stars in it, as Apple’s announcement of the series sets out.
He is the only person on this list earning as a series creator rather than only as a performer, and that is four credited roles on one show instead of one. Everyone else here is paid for appearing in something somebody else owns.
It is also the most direct answer available to the problem the rest of the list describes. If the buyers are offering flat fees where they once offered a share of the upside, the route back to a share is to own more of what is being bought.
6. Denzel Washington — $38 million
Washington had a two-part year, and the first part happened on a stage. His Othello opposite Jake Gyllenhaal ran at the Barrymore Theatre from March 23 to June 8, 2025 and became the top-grossing play in Broadway history. It set the single-week record for a play at $2,818,297, taking the mark from Harry Potter and the Cursed Child at $2,718,488. The top ticket price ran $361.90.
Those figures are worth sitting with, because they show what a hard ceiling looks like. Theatre sells one seat at a time in one room on one night, and the best-selling week any play has ever had, at a top price of $361.90, still came in under $3 million. Compare that with the sums moving around the rest of this list, where a single film deal can pay one person tens of millions, and it is clear how much of Washington’s total had to come from somewhere other than the stage.
The second part was film. Highest 2 Lowest, directed by Spike Lee, premiered at Cannes on May 19, 2025, went into theatres through A24 on August 15, and reached Apple TV+ on September 5. Washington is one of only three people who also appeared on the 2023 edition of this ranking, where he placed tenth at $24 million.
5. Brad Pitt — $41 million
F1 arrived in June 2025 and had reached $605.9 million worldwide as of August 27, 2025, making it Apple’s highest-grossing theatrical film ever. The previous holder of that title was Napoleon.
Pitt holds a gross-participation deal, so the theatrical run paid him directly rather than through the studio’s profit calculation. That combination is the oddest thing on this list. The biggest theatrical hit a technology company has ever released paid its lead in the most traditional way available, out of ticket revenue, on terms no younger actor on this list holds.
It is also a reminder that the streamers have not left cinemas alone. Apple put F1 in theatres and Netflix put the Stranger Things finale into about 600 of them. What has changed is not that the buyers avoid a theatrical release. It is that for most of the people on this list, what happens during that release no longer determines the size of the cheque.
4. Scarlett Johansson — $43 million
Johansson is the highest paid actress of 2025 and the only woman in the top six. Jurassic World Rebirth opened in July and passed $800 million worldwide, one of the year’s biggest releases. She also appeared in Wes Anderson’s The Phoenician Scheme in May.
The third strand of her year was not acting at all. Eleanor the Great, her directorial debut, premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2025. Three distinct jobs inside twelve months, franchise lead, ensemble player for an auteur and first-time director, is closer to a portfolio than a single career track, and directing is the one of the three that does not depend on another producer casting her.
Two women appear in this top ten. The 2023 edition also had two, Margot Robbie and Jennifer Aniston, and neither of them is on the current list.
3. Mark Wahlberg — $44 million
Wahlberg has the clearest streaming-first career on the list. He opened 2025 with Flight Risk in theatres in January, directed by Mel Gibson, then delivered Play Dirty to Prime Video in October and The Family Plan 2 to Apple TV+ in November. Two different technology companies bought a film from him inside two months.
Forbes also counts continuing producer fees and, more unusually, music royalties. “Good Vibrations”, his 1991 hit with Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch, still earns streaming and sync income more than three decades after release.
Read as a business rather than a filmography, that is diversification: several buyers, several kinds of claim on income, and one asset that keeps paying without him doing anything at all. Sandler, Craig and Brown each drew their year from a single counterparty. Wahlberg drew his from three, plus a song.
2. Tom Cruise — $46 million
Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning opened in May 2025 and grossed about $595 million worldwide against a reported production budget of about $400 million. On those numbers the film likely lost money for Paramount.
Cruise was paid $46 million regardless, because he holds one of the last first-dollar-gross deals in the business. He takes a share of ticket revenue from the first dollar the film takes, before the studio recovers a cent of what it spent. Star compensation and studio profit are therefore two separate questions, and only one of them was answered in Paramount’s favour.
That structure is the reason his entry reads so differently from the rest of this list. It makes the star a claimant on revenue ahead of the people financing the picture, and it is the opposite of the fixed, forecastable cost a streaming buyout produces. Cruise and Pitt are the only two people here who still have one.
1. Adam Sandler — $48 million
The highest paid actor in the world is paid by Netflix. Sandler works under a long-term deal that pays out consistently regardless of how any single release performs. He put out two films for the company in 2025: Happy Gilmore 2 in July, which he starred in and produced, and Jay Kelly in December alongside George Clooney.
The comparison that matters is with himself. Sandler topped this ranking in 2023 with $73 million. He tops it again with $48 million, which is $25 million less for the same position. The ceiling of the profession came down by roughly a third in two years while the person standing under it did not change.
It is worth calibrating the scale of these numbers too, because entertainment figures get reported as though they were enormous. The best paid actor alive earned $48 million in a year. That is a rounding error beside the fortunes on our ranking of the ten richest people in the world, where a single afternoon of trading can move a net worth by more than the entire sum Sandler was paid for 2025.
The pay cheque moved from the box office to the content budget
The pattern under this ranking is a change in who the employer is.
Sandler is paid by Netflix. Craig is paid by Netflix. Brown is paid by Netflix. Wahlberg is paid by Apple and Amazon. Half of Momoa’s year is Apple. Apple bought and distributed Washington’s film. That is most of the list drawing income from the content budgets of three technology companies, on sums agreed in advance and uncorrelated with whether the finished work succeeds.
The evidence that it is genuinely uncorrelated sits at both ends of the table. The Electric State disappointed by Netflix’s own measures and Brown made the list. The Final Reckoning likely lost Paramount money and Cruise took $46 million, because his deal comes out first. Neither outcome touched the pay.
Those employers are also not media companies in the way Paramount is a media company. Amazon is an enormous business by measures that have nothing to do with film: it places second on our ranking of America’s largest employers with about 1.58 million people. A film budget that would decide the fate of a traditional studio is a line item inside an operation that size.
The old model survives in exactly two people. Cruise and Pitt hold first-dollar-gross theatrical deals that only pay when audiences buy tickets. Both are in their sixties, and nobody younger on this list has one.
The pool is shrinking
The top twenty actors earned $590 million in 2025, down about 20 per cent from $730 million in 2024. That is the number to watch, more than any individual ranking, because it measures the whole top of the market rather than one person’s release schedule.
A fixed fee and a share of the upside are not the same trade. The first pays whatever happens; the second pays more when things go well and less when they do not. If the mix across the profession is shifting towards fewer large backends and more flat fees, which is what the deals above describe, a falling total is the arithmetic of that shift rather than a surprise.
Just outside the top ten
John Cena and Reese Witherspoon tied for eleventh at $26 million, the same figure as Brown’s after rounding. Cena’s year came from Peacemaker season two on HBO Max in August 2025, Heads of State on Prime Video in July, and a heavy commercial and endorsement load.
Further down, Cameron Diaz earned $20 million on a two-picture streaming deal. She is the list in a single line: money paid by a streamer for films the audience has yet to see.
Almost nobody stays on this list
Only three names survive from the 2023 edition of this ranking: Sandler, Cruise and Washington. Seven of the ten places turned over in two years.
The 2023 list ran Sandler at $73 million, Margot Robbie at $59 million, Cruise at $45 million, Ryan Gosling and Matt Damon at $43 million, Jennifer Aniston at $42 million, Leonardo DiCaprio and Jason Statham at $41 million, Ben Affleck at $38 million and Washington at $24 million. It is a roll call of people who did not stop working.
What moves is the release calendar. Star pay tracks franchise timing rather than fame, which is why this ranking behaves less like a measure of standing than like a schedule of which tentpoles happened to open in a given twelve months. Washington makes the same point from the other direction. He went from tenth at $24 million to sixth at $38 million in the year he set a Broadway record and premiered a film at Cannes.
What this has to do with a Canadian portfolio
The businesses writing these cheques are investable, and none of them trades in Toronto. Netflix, Apple and Amazon are listed in the United States, so a Canadian who wants to own the companies now setting the price of movie stardom is buying American shares to do it. Most people take that exposure without picking among them, through a broad fund that holds the whole U.S. market, and our guide to the best Canadian ETFs covers the options for doing it from a Canadian account.
There is one reason to read a pay ranking as a business document rather than a curiosity. A gross-participation deal of the kind Cruise and Pitt hold ties an actor’s pay to what a film actually takes at the box office. A buyout does not: the number is fixed before the audience votes, and it is owed whether the title works or not. As more of the top of the profession is paid the second way, more of what used to be a variable cost becomes a fixed one, and it lands on the same income statements shareholders read for margins.
The short version
- Adam Sandler earned $48 million in 2025, the highest of any actor, and $25 million less than he earned to finish first two years earlier.
- Six of the top ten are paid mainly by Netflix, Apple or Amazon, on money agreed before anyone saw the work.
- Two people still get paid out of ticket sales. Cruise and Pitt hold first-dollar-gross deals, both are in their sixties, and nobody younger on the list has one.
- The top twenty earned $590 million, down about 20 per cent from $730 million a year earlier. The prize at the top of the profession is shrinking.
- Seven of the ten places turned over in two years. Star pay follows the release calendar, not fame.
Disclaimer: The content on bestcanadianstocks.ca is for informational and entertainment purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Always consult a qualified financial advisor before making investment decisions. Earnings are Forbes’ calendar-2025 figures (published March 17, 2026), net of representation fees. Box-office totals carry their as-of dates in the text.
