There's no business like show business, as the world of movies and television can net some insane paychecks for actors and actresses. Some actors can net upwards of nine figures in a single year. Now the 2017-2018 statistics have begun to roll in, and it looks like former Batman George Clooney handily became the highest-paid actor of the last year without starring in a single hit movie, and it's all thanks to tequila.
According to the recent Forbes report on the highest-paid actors in Hollywood, George Clooney has taken the top spot by a fairly sizable margin. The actor netted $239 million from June 2017 to June 2018, despite not actually appearing in any major movies. The key here? Clooney recently sold his tequila company, Casamigos, for roughly $1 billion, and earned himself a pretty penny cashing in his fair share of the profit. Moreover, Clooney reportedly only invested an initial $600,000 in the company, making that payout even more impressive.
With all of that in mind, it's almost worth wondering if we should even consider Clooney an actor anymore as much as we think of him a director or a businessman. Last year, the Three Kings star spoke out about the fact that he hasn't acted in quite a while and noted that he hadn't been onscreen since 2016's Money Monster because the parts aren't particularly interesting to him anymore. He has remained involved in the film world with recent movies like the Matt Damon and Oscar Isaac-fronted Suburbicon, but he does not seem to have many feature film projects coming down the pipe that will actually see him step in front of the camera.
Of course, there were plenty of other high actor paychecks to accompany George Clooney's top spot on this list. Below Clooney's No. 1 position, Rampage star Dwayne Johnson came in at second place with a $124 million pretax haul. Then in third place was Marvel Cinematic Universe face Robert Downey Jr., who netted roughly $81 million between films like Spider-Man: Homecoming and Avengers: Infinity War -- the former of which is particularly impressive when we consider his reduced screen time in the Peter Parker solo movie. Those are both fairly impressive, but for the sake of context, neither of those totals combined reach the insane amount of money that Clooney made this year.
As always, CinemaBlend will bring you more information related to all of these beloved actors, their paychecks and their fan-favorite films, as further details about all of them are made available to us. Until we learn more about them all, make sure to head over to our movie premiere guide to read up on all of the films set to hit theaters before the end of 2018
