What about Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldana (of Avatar fame). Avatar grossed almost 3 billion all by itself, which would qualify both main actors/actresses into this list?
Yes, every actor in Titanic received the entire box office gross. That's why you never see Billy Zane anymore - it takes a long time to spend $658 Million.
I miraculously beat 23% of other people by getting 9/50. There must be a lot of other people who expect good actors in good movies with long careers to show up. Instead it's lucky casting of cookie cutter actors in big budget computerized cartoons like Batman or The Hulk or something.
Or like me, people just suck at remembering names. I can picture them clearly but can come up with names no matter how famous they are.
It not that I dont know the names because if you mention them I know them, (though that isnt my forte either, I dont know every actor in every film I have seen..) But dredging the name up from the depths of my my somehow doesnt work. While weirdly I dont have any such trouble coming up with answers no matter how obscure, stuff I might va read once 25 years ago on other types of trivia. It is just names, of actors and singers.
Maybe it is because my visual memory is stronger, all the other types of trivia I only have written info on, facts. (besides a satelite image here and there, but that is not the way you got in contact with it) But with actors they are stored as images first and I might learn the names later, but they are basicly stored as images without other data than other images from movies they have been in. The names do not really get recorded in my filing cabinet in my head ;)
Btw, someone reallly needs to declutter there sometime ;)
James Earl Jones says hi. 4 Star Wars movies, The Lion King, Patriot Games, The Hunt for Red October, Coming to America and Field of Dreams would put him near the top of the list.
For some reason James Earl Jones isn't even listed on Box Office Mojo. I was thinking the same thing and I'm pretty sure they missed a few others as well.
I looked it up, it is not extrémely far off, she is at 130. between Gibson and Kidman (124, 127) and Hale berry and Kevin costner (132, 133) and shia le boeuf at 134 which I tried for the transformers (and tried kidman aswell as a random).
Others I tried that just didnt make the cut (50-150), dicaprio 76, radcliffe 78, and clooney 144.
It’s because she doesn’t star in big action blockbuster films; her top-grossing movie only made $171M. However, 53 movies really does add up, and according to the data used here, her domestic total is $2.4B. You should go to the source site and play around with it; it’s pretty cool!
Morgan Freeman is now ahead of Eddie Murphy. Staley Tucci (2.79b), Cate Blanchett (2.77b), Bradley Cooper (2.46b), Hugh Jackman (2.238b), Elizabeth Bank (2.247b) etc etc. http://www.boxofficemojo.com/people/?view=Actor&pagenum=1&sort=sumgross&order=DESC&&p=.htm
I understand this list is accurate per the source, but my gawd, I have a lot of trouble with the way the boxofficemojo website calculates "major" roles! Skarsgard did not have a major role in most of his high grossing movies! He was maybe 12th down the list on The Avengers.
Yes but he did "star" in The Hunt For Red October as Captain Tupolev, commander of the Soviet Alfa class submarine V.K. Konavalov. Yes, I am a huge fan of Hunt For Red October. (Movie not book)
It would be nice if this was based on adjusted box office totals, so some of the great stars from the past could be on here. Obviously, with the prices of movies constantly soaring, only modern actors are listed.
How is it that there are 40 men here and 10 women? And the highest ranking is only 15th? Really says something about the entertainment industry, doesn't it...
It says something about the movies people see, not the movies that are made. There's no disputing the majority of movies focus on men rather women, but these figures are based only on what movies lots of people go see.
Harrison Ford is pretty obviously number 1 now after the third highest grossing film of all time was released last December. I'm also really surprised how people like Angelina Jolie, Alan Rickman and James Earl Jones aren't on there :/
You might not recognize him if you saw him, but you've probably seen his work before. His roles have included, among many others, Snoke in The Force Awakens, Caesar in the Planet of the Apes remake, Gollum in the Lord of the Rings movies, and King Kong. He's best known for doing mo-cap work. Since he is often portraying an expensive special effect, he ends up in a lot of very big-budget blockbusters. Probably his biggest role where he actually played a human being was as Ulysses Klaue, the arms dealer in Avengers 2 and Black Panther.
Why is Chris Pratt not on here? He was in guardians of the Galaxy,magnificent seven, and Jurassic World. Jurassic World alone should have made him rich, considering it holds the record for biggest opening weekend in history.
Um, in order for Adam Driver to have become a billionaire for The Force Awakens, they would have had to pay him half of all the money the movie made at the box office worldwide.
On second thought, in this day and age, we really do live in a 1984-esque world, and that really *IS* what facts are coming to! Thankfully, we still have JetPunk as our safe haven :-)
Ok I know he's not technically an actor, but shouldn't Matthew Wood (of voicing General Grievous fame) be up here? I mean seriously, how much did Revenge of the Sith gross?
Where. Is. James. Spader. If you've seen avengers: age of Ultron, you know it grossed a lot (not adjusted for inflation) so James Spader, who voiced and motion captured Ultron would be pretty major
This quiz needs to be updated. With Guardians of The Galaxy Vol. 2, Fate of The Furious, Beauty and The Beast, The Force Awakens and other films, nine people have been replaced and a whole lot of jumping has occurred, notably, Anthony Daniels jumping up to No. 12 and Scarlett Johanssen cracking the top ten.
It is pretty ridiculous. I actually went and counted. Of the 50 actors who appear on this list, 21 of them have a MCU movie listed as their highest-grossing film. And four more have appeared in at least one movie in the franchise (Serkis, Tucci, Blanchett, and Damon) adding to a total of 25 MCU actors. Literally half of the list is full of this franchise.
Then you have those who appeared in a Star Wars film, which is 9, but if you exclude those who have also appeared in the MCU (Jackson, Serkis, Favreau, and Portman), then the number increases by 5. So 60% of all the people on this list have appeared in either an MCU film, a Star Wars film, or both.
The voice acting really throws me off. Looking at the source, the top grossing film on the resume of Ian Mckellen (i.e. Magneto and Gandalf) is now "Beauty and the Beast".
I really wish there were a way for this to be more qualitative. If it included some function of what percentage of the gross these people could really lay claim to, then Elizabeth Banks would have no business on this list. She gets credit for all the Hunger Games and Spider-Man movies as if she were the star. Meanwhile the actual stars of those movies don't even crack this list.
I'm starting to think BoxOfficeMojo is gathering pretty questionable data, given how many people are not on this list that I'm sure have been in enough big films to make more than $2.5 billion domestic gross. Also, what counts as "starring" for purposes of this list? Does merely being in a movie count, even if it's in a supporting role?
I have a feeling that the difference between “starring” vs. “not starring” is a union-determined distinction. It’s how we wound up with Marlon Brando “starring” in movies where he was on screen for like 3 minutes. I’m sure big actors are able to negotiate themselves into “star” billing based on their perceived box office draw.
It’s just because of inflation; those actors’ biggest movies were back when ticket prices were much lower. Checking the data source, it shows that both of them would indeed make the list if adjusted totals were used: Schwarzenegger with $3.7B, and Will Ferrell with $3B.
How the heck does Elizabeth Banks get on here? I know she had small roles in the first three Spider-Man movies and in The Hunger Games, but aren't there a bunch of recurring cast members of the Star Wars, Harry Potter, and MCU films that don't make the list?
It's just a rubbish list. Some actors are not included. Some supporting roles are counted as starring roles and some starring roles are not counted. Inconsistent and arbitrary. Elizabeth Banks has not had 47 major roles in movies. She's had maybe 4.
I'm very sceptical about this list. Surely the total gross of the eight Harry Potter films would be enough to put every Harry Potter star on here. What are they counting as "starring"?
yes it's a really bad list because their rationale for "starring" role is totally inconsistent actor to actor, film to film, making the resulting list almost meaningless.
Not sure when this was last updated, but a whole whopping 11 people have crawled their way onto the list. (Mostly Endgame stars, but Lupita N'yongo managed to make enough from Us to crawl up to 49 despite not appearing in either Infinity War or Endgame.) Poor Jim Carrey's gone all the way down to 75 on the list.
Mostly MCU, with a dash of Batman, Lord of the Rings, Hunger Games, Harry Potter, Star Wars, Shrek, Pirates, and Disney live action thrown in. Plus a few odd superstars that haven't been in any of those.
The proliferation of MCU actors here helps illustrate the point that their definition of "major role" is stupidly arbitrary. Gwyneth Paltrow and Idris Elba, for instance, did NOT have major roles in Avengers: Infinity War. And for that matter why is Anthony Daniels on here when Kenny Baker is not?
Natalie Portman, too... her role in Endgame was "major?" She didn't actually film anything for that movie. They cut together unused footage from The Dark World and inserted it in there for the sake of the story. She didn't even have a line.
It also makes you wonder why Samuel L. Jackson isn’t counted for Endgame even though he had pretty much the same amount of screen time as Portman. Hell, even William Hurt is credited for Endgame!
and Jon Favreau?? He hasn't had a major role since Swingers. Simon Pegg had a major role in The Force Awakens? I didn't even know he was in that movie. I looked it up and apparently he played the "one half portion!" guy at the junk pawn shop on Jakku, whose name only the most hardcore of fans would even know.
Actually I think the only movies where Happy was impactful in the story were Iron Man 3 and Far From Home. He doesn’t really do much in the rest of those movies.
The definition of a star is getting a bit stretched. You only need to be in a couple fast edit scenes and have a couple one liners but Marvel try and brand you as a major celebrity. It says very little about the star power of the marvel actors and a lot about Marvels branding efforts.
The Jumanji clue is a bit misleading... For all the others movies, you skip the franchise name and go straight to the subtitle. I was racking my brains trying to figure out which actor from the original movie I was missing...
*Does "box office" include income from royalties, merchandising and so on?
It not that I dont know the names because if you mention them I know them, (though that isnt my forte either, I dont know every actor in every film I have seen..) But dredging the name up from the depths of my my somehow doesnt work. While weirdly I dont have any such trouble coming up with answers no matter how obscure, stuff I might va read once 25 years ago on other types of trivia. It is just names, of actors and singers.
Btw, someone reallly needs to declutter there sometime ;)
Others I tried that just didnt make the cut (50-150), dicaprio 76, radcliffe 78, and clooney 144.
Its amazing how blank your mind goes when you're trying to think of every actor/actress out there right now
It should always be with inflation.
Then you have those who appeared in a Star Wars film, which is 9, but if you exclude those who have also appeared in the MCU (Jackson, Serkis, Favreau, and Portman), then the number increases by 5. So 60% of all the people on this list have appeared in either an MCU film, a Star Wars film, or both.
It lists Endgame for Natalie Portman and she was blink-and-you-miss-it in that movie...