Forbes Magazine, America’s foremost authority on the actual worth of famous people, has compiled yet another ranking of celebrities according to how much they do or do not deserve to be stripped of their every privilege, then sentenced to a lifetime of ditch-digging and/or community theater. Today it’s one of their more positive lists—a rejoinder to the recent calling out of actors whose return on investment is so low, the money would be better spent on hiring Drew Barrymore and Eddie Murphy to wander around their kids’ bar mitzvahs while dressed as celebrities kids actually care about—and it’s called “Hollywood’s Best Actors For The Buck,” noting which stars create the most profits for the least amount of compensation.
To arrive at these numbers, Forbes looked at the last three movies each actor had made, added up those films’ total operating income (budget versus box-office and home video returns), divided it by the actor’s total compensation, then remembered that the Twilight movies starred people who aren’t worth anything outside of Twilight movies, then celebrated because they could put a picture of Twilight on the article and various Twilight fans would link to it on their fan sites, followed by a string of exclamation points and flashing emoticons.
And indeed, Twilight’s Kristen Stewart is currently Hollywood’s No. 1 investment: She generates an average of $55.83 for every $1 she is paid, and she subsists solely on the tiny nuts and berries that can fit through her pout, so you save on craft services. Unfortunately, her costar Robert Pattinson continues to make the mistake of starring in films where he is asked to play recognizable humans, so the combined losses of Remember Me and Water For Elephants dragged him down to No. 3, with Pattinson returning only $39.43 for every dollar. Also benefitting from being in a bajillion-dollar franchise: Harry Potter’s Daniel Radcliffe and Transformers’ Shia LaBeouf, both of who will likely never see this list again now that they want to be “real actors” or “adults” or whatever.
In fact, the only real surprise on this list is the No. 2 spot for Anne Hathaway, who earns that ranking almost entirely for Alice In Wonderland and for the fact that One Day was released after the cutoff date for Forbes’ data. Here’s the rest of the list, which has absolutely no practical application whatsoever, unless you are maybe a studio executive, or you’re organizing some sort of Celebrity Stock Exchange. In which case, need we remind you these are real people with lives and feelings and things except for Anne Hathaway?!
1. Kristen Stewart ($55.83 for every $1)
2. Anne Hathaway $45.67 for every $1
3. Robert Pattinson ($39.43 for every $1)
4. Daniel Radcliffe ($34.24 for every $1)
5. Shia LaBeouf ($29.40 for every $1)
6. Robert Downey Jr. ($18.74 for every $1)
7. Matt Damon ($15.83 for every $1)
8. Cate Blanchett ($15.17 for every $1)
9. Meryl Streep ($13.54 for every $1)
10. Johnny Depp ($12.48 for every $1)