11 Movie Actors Who Were Paid The Biggest Salary Per Words

2. Keanu Reeves - $159,393 Per Word For The Matrix Reloaded & The Matrix Revolutions

Jack Nicholson Joker Payday
Warner Bros.

The more stories you hear about Keanu Reeves, the more realise he's just a good dude.

For The Matrix, Reeves made $10 million up front for the picture, with an additional 10% of the film's overall gross. For the second and third movies in the series, though, the actor had a deal that saw him take home a combined $30 million and then have 15% of the gross from both The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix: Revelations.

Combined, Keanu said a total of 638 words across Reloaded and Revelations - which meant that his deal for those sequels paid out $159,393 per word.

Where the 'good dude' part gets hammered home in this instance, is how Reeves handed over the majority of his percentage points for the second and third films to the FX and costume teams who worked on those movies.

Given how those two pictures earned over $1.2 billion globally, Reeves' gesture ended up gifting approximately $75 million to those teams, which worked out at around $1 million per person for each member of the FX and costume crews.

Adding further to the positive vibes, Keanu also bought a Harley Davidson motorcycle for each of the stunt team involved in the two Matrix sequels.

Senior Writer
Senior Writer

Once described as the Swiss Army Knife of WhatCulture, Andrew can usually be found writing, editing, or presenting on a wide range of topics. As a lifelong wrestling fan, horror obsessive, and comic book nerd, he's been covering those topics professionally as far back as 2010. In addition to his current WhatCulture role of Senior Content Producer, Andrew previously spent nearly a decade as Online Editor and Lead Writer for the world's longest-running genre publication, Starburst Magazine, and his work has also been featured on BBC, TechRadar, Tom's Guide, WhatToWatch, Sportkskeeda, and various other outlets, in addition to being a Rotten Tomatoes-approved film critic. Between his main dayjob, his role as the lead panel host of Wales Comic Con, and his gig as a pre-match host for Wrexham AFC games, Andrew has also carried out a hugely varied amount of interviews, from the likes of Robert Englund, Kane Hodder, Adrienne Barbeau, Rob Zombie, Katharine Isabelle, Leigh Whannell, Bruce Campbell, and Tony Todd, to Kevin Smith, Ron Perlman, Elijah Wood, Giancarlo Esposito, Simon Pegg, Charlie Cox, the Russo Brothers, and Brian Blessed, to Kevin Conroy, Paul Dini, Tara Strong, Will Friedle, Burt Ward, Andrea Romano, Frank Miller, and Rob Liefeld, to Bret Hart, Sting, Mick Foley, Ricky Starks, Jamie Hayer, Britt Baker, Eric Bischoff, and William Regal, to Mickey Thomas, Joey Jones, Phil Parkinson, Brian Flynn, Denis Smith, Gary Bennett, Karl Connolly, and Bryan Robson - and that's just the tip of an ever-expanding iceberg.