10 Highest Paid Actors & Their Lowest Grossing Movies

2. Robert Downey Jr. - Hugo Pool

Robert Downey Junior Hugo Pool
BMG Independents

Salary: $20 million per movie

He may not quite be at the level of Tony Stark but, in real world actor terms, he's about the closest thing. Robert Downey Jr. earned an astonishing $75 million a couple of years ago as a result of his back-end deal with Marvel over the $1.2 billion-grossing Iron Man 3. 

RDJ is now part of the lucrative $20 million club, although like the others within that it depends on the type of movie in which they star (he didn't get near that for family drama The Judge). Not bad for an actor who 10 years ago was poison to most studios. Taking on Iron Man was undoubtedly the best decision of his career.

Lowest Grossing Film: Hugo Pool (1997) - $13k

This 1997 romantic comedy (renamed Pool Girl in the UK) directed by Downey's father is a star-studded affair with the likes of Sean Penn, Malcolm McDowell, Patrick Dempsey and Alyssa Milano just some of the names joining Downey in this tale of an L.A. pool cleaner (Milano) who falls in love with a young man dying of Lou Gerhig's disease. 

Downey plays Franz, a filmmaker whom Hugo meets on her various pool cleaning jobs. It was a huge critical and commercial flop, the worst of RDJ's career although some reviews of it noted that Downey makes everything he's in better.

Contributor
Contributor

I am a freelance writer specializing in film, writing for a number of different websites including my own ThoughtsOnFilm.co.uk, for which I am the editor and main writer. I am also the Freelance Film/TV Editor for student-focused magazine/website Scotcampus. I watch as many films as I can with some of my favourites including The Big Lebowski, Pulp Fiction, 2001: A Space Odyssey and Mulholland Drive. I'm just a passionate film fan expressing his opinion.