Movie Actors Who Were Paid The Biggest Salary Per Words

The Mission: Impossible series is currently the crown jewel of Paramount Pictures. Since kickstarting this franchise back in 1996, Paramount has raked in over $3.5 billion across the six outings to date for Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt. While Paramount has brought in major revenue from this property, so, too, has Cruise himself. By the time all was said and done with that first MI offering, Cruise’s base pay and additionals amassed a whopping $70 million. It’s usually the insane stunts – most of which The Cruise crazily does himself – of Mission: Impossible and its subsequent five follow-ups that grab the attention, yet that first film also saw the actor spew out a total of 3,249 words. That figure is actually way larger than the majority of the other entries on this list, yet Cruise’s mammoth paydays across the MI franchise means that a pay-per-word amount for each movie still breaks down as a jaw-dropping figure. In the case of that 1996 movie, the first Mission: Impossible picture earnt Cruise $21,545 for every word he delivered as Ethan Hunt.

April 6, 2022 | 7:16 pm