6. Jack Nicholson 

Sometimes, actors make smart business moves for themselves and end up making infinitely more money for a role than they otherwise would have. Instead of taking a lump sum of money and call it a day, they use their position in Hollywood to negotiate for the much more lucrative slice of the film’s total profits instead. This is becoming a lot more common today and Jack Nicholson was one of the first actors to do it. For his role as The Joker in Batman in 1989, he was set to get ten million dollars. Instead, he took six million on top of earning a percentage of the film’s total profit, which also included sales they made on home video sales and merchandise. The merchandising potential alone for a superhero movie was huge. Batman turned out to be the 5th most profitable film at the time, pulling in over $400 million at the box office. Nicholson wouldn’t have known it at the time, but he ended up making over 50 million dollars for the role and counting, the equivalent of $115 million by today’s standards. That’s more than 5 times what he would have received had he not negotiated. And he’s still making royalties today!

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