Johnny Depp named Hollywood’s most overpaid actor

Calculated by Forbes based on box office vs. pay

Having churned out a few box-office tankers in the last couple of years, Johnny Depp has earned himself a new title: Hollywood’s most overpaid actor.

This generous superlative is all according to Forbes, which took a look at the last three major movies the actor was in prior to June, then calculated the income of those films and divided that number by the actor’s estimated pay for them to come up with a number for final return on investment.

In other words, if we look at Depp’s resumé in the last year, he returned about US$2.80 for each dollar he was paid. The actor reprised his role as the Mad Hatter in this year’s Alice Through the Looking Glass, which pulled in US$300 million worldwide on a US$170-million budget. This was around the same time Depp was issued a restraining order on behalf of Amber Heard, his wife at the time, amid allegations of abuse, which, according to Forbes, is the sort of bad publicity that could “damage his box-office prospects for months to come.”

Last year, Depp starred in Mortdecai, a commercial and critical disappointment, which grossed a measly US$47 million worldwide. He followed that up with Black Mass, which grossed US$100 million worldwide. With a cameo in Fantastic Beats & Where To Find Them and yet another instalment of Pirates of the Caribbean on the horizon for Depp, it seems like he could be adding a little more to the bank, but not so much to his reputation.

The actor is followed closely by Will Smith (US$5) and Channing Tatum (US$6), while Julia Roberts made US$10.80 for every US$1 paid this year, with this year’s blunders Mother’s Day and Money Monster. It’s also worth noting she is the only woman to make the list.