A career of playing roles in films and plays is an exercise in futility for most people — although a relatively fortunate few have earned their fortunes from being thespians and actors, appearing on the big screen, the small screen, and stage…
The Highest Grossing Actors Born in Each Country Around The World
…but who are the highest grossing actors born in each country around the world and each state in the United States?
To answer those questions, all of the information provided on the Internet Movie Database was first collected — including the name, gender, filmography, and birthplace of 450,527 actors and actresses.
All the films from the filmographies were combined into one table, any duplicates were removed, and the year of release for each movie and information about gross worldwide was collected. Where information about gross was unavailable, the film was excluded from further calculations due to the impossibility of adequate replacement of these data. Any films from filmographies in which the actors or actresses were uncredited — as well as voice roles — were also excluded.
Next, the number of tickets sold for each movie was calculated based on the grosses adjusted for ticket price inflation provided by the Internet Movie Database — which is also known as IMDb — dividing gross worldwide by the ticket price of the release year movie. Gross worldwide was calculated into prices for 2020 by multiplying the number of tickets by the price of the ticket in 2020.
The total gross of every actor was then calculated by adding up the adjusted gross worldwide of all films in their filmography. Further, based on the place of birth of the actor or actress, the country of origin was determined; and — in the case of the United States — also the state. If the place of birth of an actor or actress was not mentioned, this personality was not included in the final table. Finally, the top-grossing actor and actress of each country and state was determined.
The data was collected in March 2022.
This article — which was written by Matt Pelkey from SavingSpot — gives more details about the highest grossing actors born in each country around the world and each state in the United States; and I have been given express written permission to use the graphs and the verbatim text from the aforementioned article in this article. While CashNetUSA has endeavored to ensure the information provided is accurate and current, it cannot guarantee it, as this information is general in nature only and does not constitute personal advice. Neither CashNetUSA nor The Gate accept any liability — and assume no responsibility — for any and all information which is presented in this article.
With that disclaimer out of the way, here is the article.
Box Office Icons
Cinema’s big names are called stars because they bridge the gap between the human and the heavenly — glowing all the while. But that’s not where the metaphor ends. Acting’s brightest lights guide ticket-buying audiences to movies that they might otherwise miss. And they command astronomical fees for doing so — because their names can attract astronomical box office sales.
The presence of a star brands a film. Audiences don’t just flock to it because they love that particular star, but because “that new comedy with Jennifer Aniston” communicates a sense of the film more than just “that new comedy” (Okay, so with Jennifer Aniston, it’s complicated). Just like buying any new product from a brand you know, that $9 ticket feels like less of a gamble.
But there’s also good old human interest. One study found that adding an A-list name to an existing cast of A-listers disproportionately boosts the expected takings of the film. Audiences pay not just for a big name but for the chemistry between big names.
So, which actors boost ticket sales the most?
What We Did
We used the IMDb filmographies of nearly half a million actors to calculate the total box office sales of their movies adjusted for inflation. Then, we gathered their birthplace to help us uncover every country’s top-grossing actors. Digging deeper into the data, we were also able to reveal the top-grossing actors born in every US state.
We made sure our study highlights both combined and female-only results because women are still underrepresented in cinema. Did you know only 31% of the top 100 Hollywood films of 2021 had a female protagonist? This was the case even though female-led films are just as profitable.
Key Findings
- Samuel L. Jackson is the highest-grossing actor from Washington, the US, and the world, with a box office total of $28,753,559,405 ($28.75 billion).
- Gwyneth Paltrow is the female actor with the highest box office takings in the world ($14.84bn) and also California’s top-grossing actor, regardless of gender.
- UK-born Warwick Davis is the top-grossing actor from outside the US, with takings of $22.3bn.
- Australia’s Cate Blanchett is the female actor from outside the US with the most box office to her name: $13.99bn.
Warwick Davis and Cate Blanchett Among World’s Most Bankable Stars
The very highest-grossing movie actors are a surprising picture of diversity. The countries with the most bankable top actors are the US, UK, and Australia — and their respective highest-grossing stars are, respectively, Black, disabled and female.
“I was growing up in segregation, so I didn’t expect to go to the movies and see Black people up on the screen,” says the world’s most stellar actor, Samuel L. Jackson. His breakthrough roles came in the early ‘90s, and by 2002 Marvel’s Mark Millar was secretly basing his drawings of a new character on the actor’s looks. Jackson was a shoo-in for the eventual movie role, becoming a linchpin of the MCU. Now, Jackson says: “I could be the Alec Guinness of Marvel movies.”
Despite the fine reputation of French cinema, the nation’s biggest grosser is best known for the US/UK-made Harry Potter films. France-born Emma Watson’s box office total currently rests at just over $13bn. Ireland’s top-grossing actor, Devon Murray, can also thank the wizarding chronicles for his place on the map. Other top figures include more or less identifiable Hollywood imports – everyone knows Arnold Schwarzenegger is Austrian, but would you have guessed that Germany’s most profitable son is Bruce Willis?
Despite the diversity among the top three actors, only two female actors make the top ten. So, we highlighted the top female actor born in each country, too. Australian Cate Blanchett remains in second place, with America’s Gwyneth Paltrow the world’s top-grossing actor among women, thanks mostly to her Marvel stint. There’s a definite ‘Marvel effect’ across our findings — Poland’s highest-grossing actress, Julia Krynke, is more familiar as a TV star in the UK, Poland and Germany, but has $1.56bn in the box office to her name thanks to an unnamed role as “Sokovian Driver” in Avengers: Age of Ultron.
New Jersey’s Zoe Saldaña Appears in World’s Highest-Grossing Movies
These are the actors born in each state whose movies have grossed the most at the box office. It’s a curious mix of blockbuster billboard names, versatile character actors and the journeyman professionals who’ve racked up the figures with semi-anonymous bit parts. The latter may have billions of dollars in ticket sales to their name while struggling to make the average US income from one year to the next.
Illinois-born Harrison Ford is very much the former, whether carrying movies with his own name or pioneering the franchise movie with the Star Wars and Indiana Jones series. The Fugitive is his highest-grossing non-franchise flick, grossing $183.88m. Harrison’s career total of $21.25bn and rising puts Illinois in second place on our map, behind Samuel L. Jackson’s home state of Washington. Meanwhile, Vermont’s most lucrative actor, Jude Ciccolella, has quietly totted up just over $2bn in the box office. Ciccolella is most familiar for his recurring TV roles but has popped up in small roles across a raft of well-performing movies over a 30-year movie career.
In Hollywood, top female actors earn 38% the rate of the top men (outside of cinema, the figure is more like 80%). But the top-ten female actors on this map have grossed over $105.4bn between them. New Jersey’s Zoe Saldaña has shown a particular flair for choosing a winner, having appeared in the two highest-grossing movies ever (Avatar and Avengers: Endgame) and three of the only five movies to each gross $2bn.
“Nobody Knows Anything”
Thinking about making a few mil’ with some ‘fantasy league’ casting for your next big international movie? You can sort our full data in full using the interactive table below to identify the most profitable movie stars from around the world.
But beware: the power of celebrity does not guarantee big bucks at the box office. Just look at Movie 43, an ensemble movie with a list of bankable names as long as your arm and including actors such as Halle Berry and Emma Stone from our maps. The picture made less than $9m at home and $32m worldwide and only broke even because the stars came out for equity rates of just $800 for a couple of days work in return for a share of the ‘profits.’
Should they have known better? As the screenwriter William Goldman famously describes the movie business in Adventures in the Screen Trade: “nobody knows anything.”
Final Boarding Call
I wonder if my profile on the the Internet Movie Database was one of the 450,527 profiles which were researched for this article.
Aahhh, who’m I kidding?
I will just leave you with this unlikely little secret about me which few people know: as part of my humble side experience in acting, I have a cameo in the official music video of F.A.M.E. by Young Jeezy featuring T.I. starting at 3:45 — and the video has already been viewed almost 22 million times.
Not liking rap or hip-hop of virtually any kind, I did not think I could have any sort of a conversation with Jay Wayne Jenkins — which is the real name of Young Jeezy — but hanging out with him turned out to be a surprisingly pleasant experience.
Anyway, the photograph at the top of this article is from my cameo as a detective in the video.
Brian Cohen appears in a cameo of the official music video of F.A.M.E. by Young Jeezy featuring T.I.
