Sandra Bullock has topped the Forbe’s list as the top earning actress. What propelled her to the top is the movie Gravity.
Initially the movie looked like a great risk after it swallowed a whopping $100 million in production costs, and the fact that it featured one woman floating in space for almost all its entire running time.
Surprisingly, Gravity beat all the odds turning out to be one of the best movies of 2013 and netting $716 million at the global box office. It won seven gold statues and ten Oscar nominations achieving a very rare feat in the film industry.
Even though Sandra Bullock didn’t win for the best actress this year, she did walk away with a ton of bucks, earning $51 million between June 2013 and June 2014.
The director of the movie Alfonso Cuaron and Warner Bros. took the risk. It is not easy to find movies based on original ideas that cost $100 million nowadays, neither is it easy to find movies featuring only one actor or actress for most of the screen time. But Gravity pulled it off thanks to the gripping performance of Sandra Bullock who took the role of Ryan Stone in the movie.
Bullock’s impressive showing is a challenge to women actors who still earn less than men in Hollywood. In fact top ten women actresses earns a total of $226 million in that period while their top ten male counterparts earned a total of $419 million; that’s almost twice what the women earned.
The women now have the ball in their court and they can change this by using female-led blockbusters that earn just as much as action films that star men.
The second woman after Sandra Bullock earned $34 in the same period. That was Jennifer Lawrence of The Hunger Games.
Jennifer was ranked 12th overall on the Celebrity 100 list which measures a combination of fame and earnings.
Third on the list is Jennifer Aniston who played a leading role in Friends. She earned $31 million in this period. Aniston’s trick is to cut her upfront payment in return for a huge portion of profits. This is working well for her.
She is also a bit choosy and mainly concentrates on smaller projects like We’re The Millers and Horrible Bosses. She is currently on Horrible Bosses 2 which is scheduled for release in November this year.
At the fourth place was Gwyneth Paltrow who pocketed $19 million in this period. Her work in Iron Man 3 landed her this fourth position.
The fifth place is tied between Cameron Diaz and Angelina Jolie. Angelina Jolie was the last year’s top earning actress pocketing a total of $33 million.
Angelina Jolie is expected to earn more in 2015 due to her profit participation on the Disney film which has netted over $700 million at the box office. At the same time she is better place for some kind of Oscar love.
Unbroken which she directed with hit the theatre this Christmas.
