The Highest-Grossing Actor In Hollywood Today Might Surprise You

It is a truth universally acknowledged that movie stars make quite a lot of money — but who makes the absolute most at the box office?

According to a report from Statista in June of this year, Samuel L. Jackson is the top-earning performer in Hollywood, leading a pack of his contemporaries with an estimated $5.85 billion at the box office. This might feel surprising at first until you remember that Jackson is part of two enormous Hollywood franchises — "Star Wars" and the Marvel Cinematic Universe — and he also shows up pretty frequently in high-grossing Quentin Tarantino films and action blockbusters like "Snakes on a Plane," without even mentioning his voice role in Pixar's "Incredibles" films. In any case, Jackson tops off the list — but who's trailing him?

Exactly who you'd probably expect. Robert Downey Jr., who "retired" from the MCU and yet is set to appear as Doctor Doom in "Avengers: Doomsday," is second on the outlet's list, while Chris Pratt's performances in the "Jurassic World" movies as well as the MCU lands him in third place. Scarlett Johansson, Tom Hanks, and Zoe Saldaña also appear high up on the list — Johansson and Saldaña are both in the MCU, and Saldaña is also a main character in the "Avatar" films, while Hanks is just a longstanding box office draw — but it's Jackson who bears the distinction of literally and figuratively earning the title of Hollywood's highest-grossing actor.

Let's be totally clear here: "highest-grossing" and "highest-paid" are not the same term. Samuel L. Jackson might be the actor whose body of work has grossed the highest amount in Hollywood, but that doesn't mean he was the highest-paid performer last year. A different outlet, TechReport, honed in on that actor as it pertains to the period between 2023 and 2024 — and as it turns out, that distinction belongs to Adam Sandler.

This is, in all likelihood, directly tied to Sandler's overall production deal with Netflix, which has produced a series of hits for the comedy star. In 2023, he worked on projects there like "Murder Mystery 2," "The Out-Laws," "You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah" (which stars his real-life daughters Sadie and Sunny Sandler as well as his wife Jackie), and "Leo." All of these, including Sandler's recent movie "Spaceman" and forthcoming comedy "Kinda Pregnant," are Netflix original films. The streamer is quite clearly paying Sandler handsomely, and according to TechReport, Sandler was paid a whopping $73 million for all of his projects there. Not bad for a guy who has quite openly said that he partly makes movies so he can bring his family and friends on lavish vacations while on location.

When it comes to this year — which, to be clear, isn't even over yet — neither Samuel L. Jackson nor Adam Sandler can match the box office gross of one star according to The Numbers: Glen Powell. Powell, whose ascendancy this year has placed him firmly on Hollywood's A-list and cemented him as a phenomenal leading man, has had a banner year thus far in 2024. First, his romantic 2023 comedy "Anyone But You," which co-stars Sydney Sweeney, blew everyone away at the box office in a pretty unconventional way; though it didn't make a splash at first, the movie picked up serious steam as it remained in theaters past its December release and drew in major audiences. 

What probably helped Powell make a huge splash at the 2024 box office, though, is "Twisters," the standalone sequel to "Twister" that stars Powell as a stormchaser alongside Daisy Edgar-Jones ("Normal People") and Anthony Ramos ("Hamilton," "In the Heights"). As of this writing, "Twisters" has proven its worth at the box office, crossing the $300 million mark — and it's doing so well that on August 30, the movie will re-release for a limited run in immersive 4DX theaters. Powell has certainly had a pretty good year, but it'll still be a while before he reaches Jackson's level.