I know, we’re not even halfway through yet, but the richest actor of 2025 has been revealed.
Last year, Dwayne Johnson landed on top but this time round he’s in second place to a celebrity who hasn’t starred in a movie for half a decade but is still reported as being worth $1.1 billion.
Other mega names among the top five include Bollywood big-name Shah Rukh Khan, Mission: Impossible’s Tom Cruise and former Casamigos Tequila co-owner George Clooney.
And it’s those side-hustles on top of appearing on the big screen that helps deepen the pockets of film stars as the number one spot this time round, according to Esquire, goes to the one and only Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Advert
Last spring, Forbes reported the Conan star’s rise to billionaire status.
Arnie is certainly a man with his finger in a number of pies, and when he became Governor of California, the world of film took a backseat.
But just weeks after leaving office, he announced in January 2011 that he was reading a number of new scripts for films.
Yet despite making that return to movies, his last recent film role was when he went back to the Terminator franchise as T-800 in 2019’s Terminator: Dark Fate.
Schwarzenegger is supposed to be starring in Kung Fury 2, but the release of that had very much been delayed. However, he will be back on our screens this Christmas when he stars as Santa Claus in the Man with the Bag.
That’ll mark over half a decade since he was last in a new movie.
His finances have certainly been fine without the silver screen though, as it’s said much of his wealth comes from him pouring his earnings into real estate since his early acting days.
It is reported Schwarzenegger now owns a huge property empire as well as having a five per cent stake in one of the world’s biggest investment firms.
It’s almost difficult to recognise now that the actor initially struggled to secure roles when he first moved to the US in 1968 because of his thick Austrian accent.
However, he ended up churning out around 50 films, making $5.5 billion at the box office, Forbes reports.
It’s believed he pocked about $500 million from his movies and that’s somewhat thanks to the way he did his deals. Like when he starred in Twins, he agreed to forgo a slary and took nearly 20 per cent of gross receipts instead meaning he ultimately took over $35 million – far more than he’d have gotten upfront.
“It became such a historic deal that the studio would never, ever make that deal again,” he said back in 2016.
Schwarzenegger has also raked it in from the likes of Super Bowl commercials and investments – like Starbucks and Google’s Series A.
But, having used much of his extra income soon after arriving in America, he claimed he was a millionaire before getting any major roles in the 70s thanks to his real estate side hustles.
Topics: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Celebrity Net Worth, Celebrity, Money
Jess Battison