Movie Actors Who Were Paid The Biggest Salary Per Words

The Marvel Cinematic Universe is one littered with astronomical paydays, particularly once this shared realm really started to get some momentum (and heavy box office returns!) behind it. As an example of how things progressed in terms of pay scale, Robert Downey Jr. received a base salary of $500,000 for the first Iron Man picture back in 2008. By the time of Avengers: Endgame, that base fee was a whopping $20 million. While the salaries of the MCU’s biggest names are easily accessible online, it’s a smidge trickier to find a full breakdown of the amount of words spouted to earn said paydays. But one such figure that is known, is that Chris Evans’ output in the aforementioned Endgame works out at $102,740 per word for what is currently believed to be the actor’s swansong as the Sentinel of Liberty. For a total of 145 words in Infinity War, Evans’ sixth ‘full’ big-screen Cap outing pocketed him a $15 million fee. Not the measurement of words-per-minute, but it’s also worth noting that Downey Jr.’s time on Spider-Man: Homecoming earned the actor somewhere between $10 million and $15 million – which, given RDJ’s 15 minutes of screen time in that picture, equates to at least $1 million per minute on-screen.

April 6, 2022 | 7:16 pm