Film Celebrities vs. Valuable Actors and Actresses

I've recently read an article about the ROI actors and actresses produce in return for their salaries.

The interesting fact is that some of the high-profile celebrity actors and actresses are pretty poor producers when it comes to return on investment.

Here are some names and the box office return they produced on $1 of their salaries.

One more thing... Forbes Magazine calculated the film's net revenue by adding the worldwide box office sales and the US DVD sales together, and then deducting the film's budget. Then this net revenue was divided by the actor's and actresses' salaries to produce gross income.

Top range

#1 Matt Damon $29
#2 Brad Pitt $24
#3 Vince Vaughn and Johnny Depp $21
#5 Jennifer Aniston $17

Mid-range

Tom Hanks $12
Tom Cruise $11
Will Smith $10

Bottom of the pile

Adam Sandler $9
Will Farrell and Jim Carrey $8
Russel Crowe $5

Interesting to observe that the Damon, Pitt, Vaughn, Depp and Aniston are pretty down-to-earth folks in comparison to over-hyped and over-glorified celebrities like Cruise, Carrey or Crow.

Why is this important?

Last week alone I received four emails from four Internet gurus with pretty much the same message, "Unfortunately the web is full of charlatans, scam artists and idiots, but lucky for you, I'm the real deal, I'm the real expert, and now you can join my $10,000 coaching programme and also receive $10 billion worth of bonuses. "

I have a sneaking suspicion that many of these "real deals" of the Internet are not real deals but loudmouths and good self-promoters. Just like some of the "great inventors."

Most people believe that Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone, Thomas Edison invented electric light and Guglielmo Marconi invented radio.

The fact is that it was Antonio Meucci, a Florentine inventor who invented the telephone in 1849 in Cuba. But he didn't have the money to file for patent, and had to settle for "notice of invention." Two years later, Bell filed for a patent, so now he's is the inventor.

Joseph Swann in England and William Sawyer in the US were also brilliant inventors. They invented the light bulb but didn’t understand the media and PR the way Edison did. When Edison learnt about his rival, he announced the invention of the light bulb before actually creating a prototype. So, Edison became the inventor of the light bulb.

Nikola Tesla invented radio in 1893, it was the 19 year-old boisterous loudmouth Guglielmo Marconi who announced it to the media. Instantly, Marconi became the great inventor.

Definitely not great inventors, but both Bell, Edison and Marconi were excellent manipulators and bold-faced liars.

Meucci, Swann, Sawyer and Tesla created huge value for mankind. Bell, Edison and Marconi turned themselves into celebrities and enjoyed their ill-deserved riches backed by other people's work and brainpower.

And most people are like the lady in the old Led Zeppelin song, Stairway To Heaven…

"There's a lady who's sure
All that glitters is gold
And she's buying a stairway to heaven."

But I think in life not everything that glitters is gold, and not everything that is gold glitters. But people are obsessed with glitter. That's why crappy books with great cover sells. Most people judge books by their covers and don't care what's inside. Most of them don't read them beyond the first 5-10 pages anyway. The book becomes bookshelf ornament.

It seems to me that many of these Internet false prophets are so desperate to shine that in the effort they turn themselves into pieces of manure, stinking up the web and the lives of the people they contact with their hype-driven marketing materials.

So, be careful with them.