5. Dwayne Johnson - Walking Tall (2004)
It's well known that the $5.5 million salary paid to the man then still known as The Rock to appear in The Scorpion King in 2002 was the highest salary ever paid to an actor for their first starring role. As we all know now, the self-proclaimed 'franchise Viagra' has firmly established himself as one of the highest-paid actors in Hollywood thanks to a string of box-office franchise hits, but his earlier career was patchy to say the least. Following the relative success of The Scorpion King ($165 million on a $60 million budget), and the barely break-even The Rundown (an underrated gem of an action movie, in my humble opinion), Johnson's third starring role came with Walking Tall, a loose remake of the 1973 version that itself was based on the famous exploits of Sheriff Buford Pusser. Despite being an entirely bland and forgettable genre picture, The Rock was paid a handsome $15 million for his troubles. After a solid $15.5 million domestic opening weekend, Walking Tall quickly burnt out at the box office and ended up closing with $57.2 million on a $46 million budget. The reason it makes this list is down to the fact that Dwayne Johnson was still an active professional wrestler at the time and not a full-time actor, with only one hit movie to his name (that was a spin-off from the still-popular Mummy franchise). It seems a tad ridiculous in my book to pay someone $15 million for only their third movie, especially when it counts for almost a third of the entire production budget.