Emma Stone tops Forbes list of best paid actresses

LOS ANGELES – Oscar-winning Emma Stone capped a perfect 12 months on Wednesday as she knocked Jennifer Lawrence off the top spot on Forbes’ 2017 list of the world’s highest-paid actresses.

ACTRESS Emma Stone poses on arrival for the AFI Life Achievement Award Gala honoring Diane Keaton in Hollywood, California on June 8. – AFP

Stone, 28, who won best actress for her role as a struggling performer in La La Land, made $26 million in pre-tax earnings in the year up to June, according to the magazine’s annual chart.

Friends star Jennifer Aniston, 48, also leapfrogged Lawrence, grabbing the runner-up spot with earnings of $25.5 million, with residual income still coming in from the television sitcom Friends and endorsement deals with brands such as SmartWater and Emirates Airline.

Lawrence’s $24 million was enough for third spot but a shadow of the 27-year-old’s earnings in the last Forbes list.

The star, who took the best actress Oscar for 2012 comedy-drama Silver Linings Playbook, topped the 2016 chart for a second successive year with $46 million.

The actress, who has spoken out on equal pay for women in Hollywood, saw her earnings dip this year after the conclusion of the Hunger Games franchise, but continues to make money from movie deals and an endorsement deal with fashion brand Christian Dior.

Forbes compiles its annual celebrity earnings lists from box office and Nielsen data, as well as from interviews with industry insiders.

Melissa McCarthy and Mila Kunis – on $18 million and $15.5 million respectively – rounded off the world’s five highest-paid actresses.

The top 10 – also including Emma Watson, Charlize Theron, Cate Blanchett, Julia Roberts, and Amy Adams – made a combined $172.5 million, down 16% from last year’s $205 million total, said Forbes.

The actors’ list due to be published later in the week is expected to show once again men banking far more than their female counterparts.

The issue of pay disparity grabbed headlines in 2014 after a leak of stolen e-mails from Sony Pictures Entertainment showed that Lawrence was paid less than her male co-stars in the hit movie American Hustle.

Last year, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson topped Forbes’ list of highest-paid actors at $64.5 million, more than double Stone’s total this year.

It has been an incredible few months for Stone, who completed a clean sweep of Hollywood’s major prizes in February with an Oscar for her performance as an aspiring actress in La La Land.

She had already picked up trophies at the Golden Globes, British BAFTAs and Screen Actors Guild Awards.

Born Emily Jean Stone in Scottsdale, Arizona to a homemaker mother and businessman father, Stone began acting in youth theater in Phoenix.

At the age of just 14, she made a PowerPoint presentation entitled “Project Hollywood” to persuade her parents to allow her to drop out of school and pursue a movie career.

She has appeared in more than 20 movies since her 2007 debut in Superbad but really came to the fore as a major talent in The Help, Tate Taylor’s 2011 drama about the racism faced by black maids in 1960s Mississippi.

A string of hit films followed, including two Spider-Man movies and Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s Birdman, which earned Stone a best supporting actress nomination. – AFP/Reuters