The young stars of Harry Potter were Hollywood's highest-earning actors last year, according to a list published Friday by Vanity Fair magazine.
Daniel Radcliffe, 19, earned an estimated 41 million dollars for signing on to appear in the final two Harry Potter movies. His co-star Emma Watson, also 19, earned 30 million dollars, thanks to her two 15-million-dollar paydays for the remaining Hogwarts films.
Those earnings allowed Radcliffe to top such Hollywood luminaries as Ben Stiller (40 million dollars), Tom Hanks (36 million dollars), Owen Wilson (29 million dollars), Nicolas Cage (28 million dollars) and Russell Crowe (28 million dollars).
Watson, a student at Brown University in the US, beat out such superstars as Cameron Diaz (27 million dollars), Sarah Jessica Parker (24 million dollars) and Katherine Heigl (24 million dollars), not to mention Angelina Jolie (21 million dollars), Jennifer Aniston (20 million dollars) and Sandra Bullock (20 million dollars).
But the earning power of Hollywood's best-known names paled in comparison to that of the men behind the camera. Michael Bay, the director and producer of the Transformers film franchise, earned a staggering 125 million dollars to top the list of Hollywood earners.
Steven Spielberg was second with earnings of 85 million dollars, while Roland Emmerich, the creator of the disaster movie 2012 earned 70 million dollars.
Avatar producer and director James Cameron took in 50 million dollars while Todd Phillips, who directed the movie The Hangover, earned 40 million dollars.
