Are The Stars Worth Their Salaries?

Even a Serious Thespian like Jodie Foster seems unfazed by the trend — perhaps because she's being paid $9 million to star in Robert Zemeckis' science-fiction thriller Contact. ‘‘It's silly to talk about,’‘ she says. ‘‘Actors are the only thing that can open a movie. A Tom Cruise film opens on 2,500 screens, and in exactly two weekends the studio has made the money they paid him. Put Joe Schmo in a movie for 25 cents, and the film won't make a dime.’‘

In fairness to the stars, they aren't the only ones in Hollywood rolling in cash these days. Studio bigwigs have also been raking it in — and not just in salaries and bonuses. Sony reportedly paid its former executives Peter Guber, Jon Peters, Frank Price, and Mike Medavoy $100 million in buyouts a few years ago, just to get them off its lot. (Guber, who as the studio's chairman was responsible for some of its biggest flops, is now back with a hugely lucrative production deal.) Plenty of directors have been doing well too: Last fall Alan J. Pakula signed a plum $5 million deal to film the cop drama Devil's Own (partly because he was the only director Brad Pitt and Harrison Ford — who'll be taking home a combined $30 million — could agree on). Even lowly screenwriters have been cashing in. Astonishingly, Joe Eszterhas was paid more than $3 million for typing Showgirls.

Of course, not everyone has been greedy. A few pricey actors have even been willing to keep budgets low by forgoing huge upfront payments in exchange for a piece of the profits (which sometimes turns out to be even more lucrative — it's how Tom Hanks ended up making $60 million for Forrest Gump). Other stars, including Willis, Travolta, and Cage, have taken steep pay cuts to work on low-budget, high-status flicks. Stallone, for one, just signed to do a Miramax movie called Copland for less money than he spends on cigars in a year. It's Cheap Chic — a cool way of announcing to the world how serious you are about your craft.

Still, when Not Ready for Big Time Players like Adam Sandler and Chris Farley are getting offered up to $6 million, it's time to start scanning the skies for the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Even some actors are beginning to turn off to the trend — sort of. ‘‘It's out of control, inflated, bloated, and grotesque,’‘ concedes Sandra Bernhard. ‘‘But I wouldn't mind making a million for doing a movie myself.’‘

— Additional reporting by Rebecca Ascher-Walsh, Bill Higgins, Beth Johnson, Dave Karger, Gregg Kilday, Jessica Shaw, and Anne Thompson