How do you measure a movie star? As recently as ten or twenty years ago, it was easy: Just look for the biggest names with the biggest paychecks and biggest box-office grosses. But oh, how times have changed! These days, some of our most famous actors struggle to open a movie, while Hollywood’s hugest successes often feature lesser-known names donning spandex superhero suits. Celebrity has become disconnected from stardom, as top-selling tabloid cover subjects get ignored at the box office. Even those eye-popping paychecks of yore have begun to wane: The days of free and easy $20 million salaries are over, and cautious studios are slashing pay rates in favor of potential (but controlled) back-end profits. In short, it’s never been harder to calculate a star’s worth than it is in 2012, and that’s where Vulture's 100 Most Valuable Stars list comes in.
1. Robert Downey Jr.The Comeback Kid: "I think every movie I ever do is going to be one of the three biggest movies ever, and it finally happened," Robert Downey Jr. bragged this summer during his Comic-Con victory lap. Just goes to show you, there’s power in positive thinking: Nearly unhireable a decade ago, this year Downey helped power The Avengers to that record-busting billion-and-a-half worldwide gross and ended up in the very top spot on our Most Valuable Stars list. Since his breakout performance in 2008’s Iron Man, Downey has made only one misstep (2009’s underperforming The Soloist) and has managed to deliver seven huge hits. Three of them put him in the Iron Man armor, sure, but Downey’s got another franchise, Sherlock Holmes, which grosses more than half a billion worldwide with each installment, and his comic turns in Tropic Thunder and Due Date both crossed the $100 million mark domestically. It helps that Downey is so like his most famous character that Iron Man 3 director Shane Black says, "He IS Tony Stark"; audiences clearly can’t get enough of either. Sober, savvy, and versatile (so much so that only Downey could pull off the part of an Aussie actor donning blackface in Tropic Thunder and snag an Oscar nomination for it), Downey’s engineered the biggest comeback that modern Hollywood’s ever seen, going from drug-addict joke to blockbuster king. Let that be a lesson to some of this list’s more scandal-ridden subjects: There’s always a second (or third, or fourth) act to be had, if you’ve got the talent to pull it off.
2. Will SmithThe Returning Box-Office King: Will Smith has never won an Oscar, but he’s the definitive Hollywood omni-star — an international box-office love object whose attachment to any project all but guarantees that it’ll get made and be a hit. There’s no mystery about this: Smith’s twenty years’ worth of films, including such galactic smashes as Bad Boys, Independence Day, and Men in Black, have grossed more than $6 billion worldwide. He’s got a safe cushion from which to tweak his formula, whether mixing action with melancholy in I Am Legend; slurring a drunken, misanthropic superhero in Hancock; or playing a give-until-it-hurts organ donor in the quizzical 2008 drama Seven Pounds, the ending of which earned snickers, but the film still took in $168.1 million worldwide. He’s only made one movie in almost four years, which is the main reason he doesn’t top this list. Instead, he’s been busy building up the next generation of super-Smiths, setting up son Jaden in the hit Karate Kid remake and foisting his adorable daughter, Willow, on audiences with "Whip My Hair" and Annie. But when he decided to return with MiB3, audiences welcomed him back. While the $174.9 million U.S. gross was the lowest of the trilogy, internationally it has taken in $436.6 million, his highest take ever. If any doubts linger — did MiB3 drop because the franchise is too old or because he stayed away too long? — his next test is the sci-fi opus After Earth. But if anybody can turn an M. Night Shyamalan movie into a hit, it’s Will Smith.
3. Johnny DeppThe Quirky Tentpole Perennial: Johnny Depp rose to fame as an almost reluctant leading man, surfing the outer edges of Hollywood and testing his versatility with a range of roles from the bizarre (Edward Scissorhands, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas) to the romantic (Don Juan DeMarco, Chocolat), with a couple of crime dramas thrown in for variety (Donnie Brasco, Blow). These days, though, those early outings seem like the liner notes of a stellar career, trumped by his Keith Richards-inspired turn as Captain Jack Sparrow in Disney’s mammoth Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, which has earned more than $4 billion for Disney and a reported $300 million for Depp, enough for the actor to acquire an island. (He’s flirting with a fifth installment, of course.) There’s also his fruitful eight-film collaboration with director Tim Burton: Their highest-grossing flick, Alice in Wonderland, topped the billion-dollar mark, though the pair’s latest outing, Dark Shadows, failed to gross $100 million, suggesting audiences may be tiring of their fantastical shtick, and the disappointing domestic grosses for The Rum Diary and The Tourist suggest that he’s not invulnerable. Still, the studios awarded Depp top marks for value, just one of a handful of A-list actors to reach that number (Tom Cruise, Robert Downey Jr., Denzel Washington, and Will Smith are the others). After a recent high-profile split from longtime partner Vanessa Paradis, the normally private Depp returned to the tabloids, and he should also expect increased media scrutiny after he was controversially cast as Tonto in Gore Verbinski’s The Lone Ranger.
4. Denzel WashingtonThe Solid Star: Denzel Washington may not get the hype of flashy stars like Robert Downey Jr. and Johnny Depp, but there’s a reason that he scored so high on this list: As Moneyball taught us last year, the most important thing is to get on base, and Washington is the master of hitting solid doubles and triples at every at bat. All but one of his last ten movies (2007’s smaller, Oscar-baity The Great Debaters) has grossed more than $50 million, branding him one of the most dependable choices a studio can make. If "opening" a movie on its first weekend is still the surest sign of star power, Washington can guarantee you something more than $20 million every time, and his most recent action vehicle, Safe House, opened to $40 million. (And though Washington’s often paired with a younger up-and-comer like Ryan Reynolds or Chris Pine, box-office pundits give him the lion’s share of credit when his movies open well.) Not bad for a 57-year-old leading man! The two-time Oscar winner has the promising Robert Zemeckis drama Flight on tap for awards season this year; let’s hope that after winning the Tony for Fences in 2010, Washington’s ready to set aside those lucrative explosions for a while in order to show off some dramatic firepower.
5. Brad PittThe Not-Just-A-Pretty-Face: One of the most recognizable names — and most photographed faces — in the entertainment industry, Brad Pitt spent his mid-40s largely eschewing his "worldwide sex symbol" status with a series of less-predictable leading roles in films like The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (in which he ages backwards), the Coen Brothers’ Burn After Reading (in which he plays a vapid gym-head), and Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life (we’re still trying to figure out what that one was about). And since being really, really good-looking (eighteen magazine covers in five years!), starring in international blockbusters (Pitt’s films have earned a cumulative $1 billion internationally in the last five years alone), and dating some of the most coveted women in the world doesn’t seem to be enough for the underachiever, Brad Pitt also runs Plan B Entertainment, whose recent productions include the Oscar-nominated The Departed and Moneyball (in which Pitt also starred). Though he hasn’t taken home a gold statue himself, Pitt just came off a recent staggering run of back-to-back-to-back-to-back Best Picture nominees. Not bad for a man responsible for virtually half of all tabloid coverage alongside partner Angelina Jolie. Now with six kids in tow, the soon-to-be Mr. Jolie recently premiered his new crime drama Killing Them Softly at Cannes and will then be seen in the troubled 2013 postapocalyptic zombie flick World War Z.
6. Matt DamonThe Sign of Quality: Much like the other sides of the Oceans 11 triangle, George Clooney and Brad Pitt, Matt Damon resists all temptations to sell out and invariably makes the interesting choice: When you see his face in an ad, you know that the project isn’t going to be an average example of that genre, just as the Bourne movies weren’t mere actioners and True Grit wasn’t just a western. Next year’s Elysium, directed by District 9’s allegory-prone Neill Blomkamp, promises to be anything but generic sci-fi, and then there’s the slated HBO Liberace biopic Behind the Candelabra (in which he plays the young lover of Michael Douglas’s pianist). With Damon’s presence as its own meaningful imprimatur, he’s managed to bring some increasingly rare adult films to a surprisingly high gross, hence his high studio rating: "surprising" because his targeted grown-up, discerning audience doesn’t rush out to an opening weekend. As a result, his mid-price films are often dismissed as underperformers when they don’t debut strong — then a year later, you look up to see that We Bought a Zoo, roundly considered one of last Christmas’s duds, grossed $75.6 million in the U.S. Nobody paid much attention to the relatively low-tech Adjustment Bureau at the time (That’s the hat movie, right?), but it wound up with $62.5 million. An ardent activist, he’s cognizant that his serious films and causes threaten to paint him as a dour personality, so he’s quick to preempt that by popping up in Jimmy Kimmel skits and SNL digital shorts. Say his name and while some people will think of his work with Haiti, many more will start humming, "I’m fucking Matt Damon."
7. Clint EastwoodThe Beloved Icon: Eastwood comes in at number seven on Vulture’s list, to which some of you may be shouting, "What is this, 1977’s Most Valuable Stars?" To those doubters, let us point you to the one movie that Eastwood starred in during our five-year window: 2008’s Gran Torino. At age 78, he was the only recognizable star in the film, playing an aged version of his iconic squinting vigilante, and it grossed $270 million worldwide. Eastwood’s on-camera appearances have slowed down, even as he continues to direct a movie a year and be recognized as one of America’s great auteurs, but Gran Torino showed just how much more powerful his face is than just his name in the credits: Only one of his eight films since 2003’s Mystic River has made more than $40 million, and it was 2004’s Million Dollar Baby, the only other movie he starred in. Studios rate him near the top of their scale, and his likability score is second only to Sandra Bullock. In September, at 82, he’ll star as Amy Adams’s nearly-blind baseball-scout father (presumably a gruff one) in Trouble With the Curve, directed by his Malpaso Productions partner and long-time first assistant director Robert Lorenz. Unlike past icons like John Wayne, Eastwood has never shied away from showing how age has changed the man his longtime fans remember from the spaghetti westerns. By not trying to be stuck in an era, he’s made his audience want to stick with him.
8. Angelina JolieMrs Hollywood: In addition to her duties as the world’s most famous celebrity, Angelina Jolie is also occasionally called upon to open a movie — which she’s perfectly capable of. She’s the daughter of Jon Voight, the former wife of Billy Bob Thornton, a world-saving humanitarian, a perennial Most Beautiful Person, the fastest-growing private adoption agency in North America, and the live-in mother of Brad Pitt’s children, which means that few of her moves go unnoticed by gossip magazines. But her box-office history will show that she’s also pretty good at choosing her work: Jolie stands alone among actresses whose name guarantees a solid first weekend for a large-budget action movie. And her one-for-them (2005’s Mr. & Mrs. Smith, 2008’s Wanted, 2010’s Salt), one-for-me (2007’s A Mighty Heart, 2008’s Changeling) approach has helped her weather the occasional one-for-nobody (2010’s The Tourist, which was the butt of Ricky Gervais jokes domestically, even if it eventually earned a nice foreign tally). That Oscar she won for 1999’s Girl, Interrupted means she can dabble in prestige (like last year’s In the Land of Blood and Honey, her directorial debut) without it seeming like a desperate bid for take-me-seriously awards attention. Next on her schedule is Disney’s Maleficent, a $170 million live-action version of the Sleeping Beauty story told from the villain’s perspective, and if there’s anyone who can enliven the already-crowded big-budget fairy-tale genre, it’s Angelina in horns.
9. Meryl StreepThe Queen: It’s a common complaint that there are no roles for actresses of a certain age. This is because a) there are not many written, and b) those that are all seem to go to Meryl Streep. Yet, who could begrudge her? Now entering her fourth decade of being dubbed "the greatest living actress," she is the beloved grand dame of Hollywood, with everyone still rooting for her at the Oscars even though we all know that, with three, she has plenty, but it’s so entertaining to watch her gasp and fumble her glasses and act like it all still affects her after all the years of plaudits. And that’s part of her charm: always looking like she’s having fun. In the eighties, she dove into the most wrenching material, but now she seems driven by what she will enjoy (one pictures her choosing movies like Julia Child would go grocery shopping: a little of this, oh my, that would be good today...). What bigger fuck-you is there to anyone who might think of her as a precious actor than clearly having a ball doing Mamma Mia!? Or giggling and flirting her way through Nancy Meyers’s It’s Complicated? She was better than them both, but she didn’t act like it, and audiences flocked to them, with Mamma Mia! grossing an astounding $609.8 million worldwide. She has not given up on serious drama, winning an Oscar for last year’s The Iron Lady, but before taking on the Pulitzer Prize-winning August: Osage County, she’ll appear in the August marriage comedy Hope Springs. It probably won’t get her an Oscar, but she’ll make it more fun than sex therapy with Tommy Lee Jones should be.
10. George ClooneyThe King of Hollywood: George Clooney is a movie star. And not just any movie star: He’s one of the biggest the town has to offer, despite a dearth of blockbuster breakouts on his resume. Still, that doesn’t seem to bother him too much, nor does it bother studios. He’s the sort of actor who recalls Hollywood’s golden age, and he prefers to be picky with material, mixing up his resume with unique choices like Syriana and Coen Brothers films rather than always reaching for the sure thing. And though he had a run of weaker films a few years back (we’re looking at you, Leatherheads and The Men Who Stare at Goats), he’s the rare star who can power dramas like The Descendants, Up in the Air, and The Ides of March to success at home and abroad. Yes, his biggest hits remain the Ocean’s franchise and a turn as Bruce Wayne in Batman & Robin that he’d rather disavow, but Clooney has got a lot of Academy cred as an actor-producer-director: seven Oscar nominations and one win for his supporting work in Syriana. He somehow manages to keep himself unsullied by the tabloids despite his swinging-door relationship status and instead draws press attention where he wants it, spotlighting top-tier causes like Haiti and the Sudan. Up next, he teams with Sandra Bullock for Alfonso Cuaron’s Gravity, and he’ll also produce the film adaptation of the Tony- and Pulitzer-winning August: Osage County, starring Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts.
11. Sandra BullockAmerica's Oscar-Winning Sweetheart: It feels like Sandra Bullock has turned a corner in her career, even if she’s yet to fully make good on it. The comedy queen surprised in 2009 when she powered The Proposal to a then-career-best $163 million... and trumped that just a few months later when The Blind Side grossed a staggering $255 million and earned her an Oscar for Best Actress. Yes, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close came along last year to give Bullock two back-to-back films nominated for Best Picture — something no one could have foreseen back in her Two Weeks Notice/Miss Congeniality 2 days — but it hardly felt like Bullock cashing in her new capital. Instead, it feels like 2013 will be the year that she truly tests her newfound mettle: In addition to starring almost single-handedly in Alfonso Cuaron’s innovative sci-fi film Gravity, she’ll be seen in a big ol’ comedy with Melissa McCarthy, this one manned by Bridesmaids helmer Paul Feig instead of Bullock’s usual list of anonymous rom-com directors. Will she still have that shine four years after the biggest year of her life? We think audiences will cut her some slack for taking time off to deal with personal matters (including a messy divorce and a newly adopted son), and the general public seems to agree, since they handed Bullock the highest likeability score on this entire list.
12. Mark WahlbergSmarter Than He Looks: Mark Wahlberg is the kind of actor who you think is underrated until you realize that everyone in Hollywood rates him just fine. Martin Scorsese, Peter Jackson, David O. Russell, and more all want to work with him; he always brings unexpected intelligence to his cops, mooks, thieves, and thugs; and he’s been nominated for two Oscars. He just seems underrated because even as he’s so dependably great, he’s always happy to let someone else get a little more glory in a showier part, stepping back to let Christian Bale loudly self-destruct in The Fighter and be the straight(er) man to Will Ferrell in The Other Guys or a giant teddy bear in Ted. Because he’s not a showboat, audiences trust him (our studio panel rate him a high eight), and he never gets blamed for his grimace-y failures, like The Lovely Bones and The Happening. (Hell, nobody even held him responsible when Entourage turned into a punch line, and that was his life story.) He deftly trades off comedies and dramas and has high likability for being able to laugh at himself — embracing Andy Samberg’s SNL impression — and in real life, coming off as a family man who is still a Southie goofball at haht. But this image as a slightly dopey townie belies his career savvy; he’s a strong producer (Boardwalk Empire) and single-mindedly makes great projects happen for himself, whether The Fighter or next year’s promising Russell Crowe partnership Broken City.
13. Leonardo DiCaprioThe Auteur's Muse: It’s been fifteen years since Leonardo DiCaprio stowed away on Titanic, but audiences refuse to let go. That blockbuster made him a heartthrob and superstar at 22, but DiCaprio seemed allergic to the status even back then, zeroing in on filmmakers who would help give his career some critical credibility. After making films with Woody Allen (Celebrity) and Danny Boyle (The Beach), DiCaprio forged a crucial partnership with Martin Scorsese that earned him an Oscar nomination (for The Aviator), his second Best Picture winner (The Departed), and a big fat spring hit (Shutter Island). DiCaprio is still capable of Titanic-style monster grosses — Christopher Nolan’s mind-bending Inception earned the actor a worldwide gross of $825 million — and his work in James Cameron's epic, Hollywood's first international hit, won him lasting international appeal, as his five most recent films grossed more outside the U.S. than at home. Coming up, the loyal DiCaprio once again teams with with Baz Luhrmann on a retelling of The Great Gatsby and later with Scorsese on The Wolf of Wall Street, but he’s still willing to take chances for the right director, and will test his audience by playing a villain for the first time, a rotten-toothed racist in Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained.
14. Daniel RadcliffeThe Boy Wizard: Daniel Radcliffe will forever be best-known as the titular wizard in the Harry Potter film franchise, which to date has netted more than $7.7 billion worldwide. Now the kid with the thunderbolt scar has entered a new, more mature phase of his life and career: Beyond a starring role in well-reviewed horror flick The Woman in Black, Radcliffe used the Broadway stage to exhibit his versatility and craft. He stripped naked in Equus and more recently appeared in the revival of the musical How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, alongside John Larroquette. (Both roles earned him Drama Desk Award nominations.) Still, it’s difficult to overstate the impact of Harry Potter on Radcliffe’s career. The rabid fandom associated with the book series and film franchise transferred into continued interest in Radcliffe’s professional and personal life. Even his non-Potter roles have considerable success; The Woman in Black made about $74 million overseas, outperforming its U.S. box office by $20 million. Still, even though the eight Harry Potter films made him an extremely wealthy young man, Radcliffe manages to come off as affable, relatable, and down-to-earth, a hardworking actor who’s more than just a former child Muggle. He’ll next try playing poet Allen Ginsberg in the beatnik murder drama Kill Your Darlings.
15. Tom CruiseThe Star With Baggage: Tom Cruise was so close to a real, honest-to-goodness comeback: After his audience appeal dipped precipitously in recent years with films like Knight and Day and Valkyrie, he steered Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol to mega grosses last winter, earning a career-best (and franchise-best) total of $694 million worldwide. Finally, it seemed like Cruise had put his tabloid troubles behind him and could resume his superstardom. And then came summer: Not only did Rock of Ages (sold mostly on Cruise’s supporting role) bomb at the box office, but Katie Holmes sprung divorce papers on Cruise and launched a stunning, successful PR offensive against her former husband while Cruise was tied up working on Joseph Kosinski’s Oblivion. And now, once again, Cruise has to fend off stories about his overweening commitment to Scientology, alleged mistreatment of Holmes, and the safety of daughter Suri, which won’t help restore his already once-depleted appeal with female audiences. Cruise will always be a big star and an overseas draw, but will the newly renewed gossip mill weaken Cruise’s winter starring vehicle Jack Reacher? Too soon to say, though he’ll always have a Mission: Impossible 5 if he wants it — or needs it.
16. Jennifer Lawrence
17. Christian Bale
18. Liam Neeson
19. Emma Stone
20. Shia LaBeouf
21. Chris Hemsworth
22. Steve Carell
23. Adam Sandler
24. Bruce Willis
25. Channing Tatum
26. Ben Stiller
27. Rachel McAdams
28. Dwayne Johnson
29. Camerona Diaz
30. Zach Galifianakis
31. Hugh Jackman
32. Vin Disel
33. Jason Statham
34. Tom Hanks
35. Natalie Portman
36. Tina Fey
37. Ryan Gosling
38. Kristen Stewart
39. Daniel Craig
40. Matthew McConaughey
41. Reese Witherspoon
42. Julia Roberts
43. Jonah Hill
44. Jennifer Aniston
45. Will Ferrell
46. Amy Adams
47. Bradley Cooper
48. Ben Affleck
49. Taylor Lautner
50. Jim Carrey
51. Daniel Day Lewis
52. Robert De Niro
53. Jason Segel
54. Vince Vaughn
55. Jeff Bridges
56. Mila Kunis
57. Jeremy Renner
58. Seth Rogen
59. Robert Pattinson
60. Russell Crowe
61. Anne Hathaway
62. Katherine Heigl
63. Kevin James
64. Owen Wilson
65. Cate Blanchett
66. Tyler Perry
67. Jaden Smith
68. Gerard Butler
69. Sacha Baron Cohen
70. Chris Pine
71. Scarlett Johansson
72. Sylvester Stallone
73. Kate Winslet
74. Sam Worthington
75. Ryan Reynolds
76. Justin Timberlake
77. Tom Hardy
78. James Franco
79. Colin Firth
80. Charlize Theron
81. Sean Penn
82. Jason Bateman
83. Kristen Wiig
84. Andrew Garfield
85. Melissa McCarthy
86. Paul Rudd
87. Zac Efron
88. Gwyneth Paltrow
89. Jake Gyllenhaal
90. Chris Evans
91. Kate Beckinsale
92. Julianne Moore
93. Blake Lively
94. Jamie Foxx
95. Michael Fassbender
96. Joseph Gordon-Levitt
97. Jennifer Garner
98. Keanu Reeves
99. Zoe Saldana
100. Keira Knightley
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