The Top-Earning Celebrities Over 50
At a time in life when some are coasting into retirement, stars like Madonna and Oprah glow brighter than ever.
At 50, Madonna is still fabulous. Even with her pending divorce from husband Guy Ritchie, it seems the Material Girl is far from slowing down. More likely she's just getting ready to reinvent herself once again. While younger stars like Britney Spears suffer public breakdowns, Madonna keeps putting out new albums and performing in front of millions of people like a machine.
That explains how she made more than $40 million last year, landing her squarely in the middle of our list of Top-Earning Celebrities Over 50, a measure of earnings between June 2007 and June 2008. At a time in life when some people are thinking about winding down and coasting into retirement, these stars glow brighter than ever.
Topping the list is Oprah Winfrey. At age 54, she earned $275 million last year. In addition to her own daytime chat show, Oprah has ownership stakes in a magazine, a station on XM Satellite Radio and a cable channel called OWN: The Oprah Winfrey Network scheduled to debut next year. She also gets a share of the profits from her successful protges, Dr. Phil McGraw and chef Rachael Ray.
Bruce Willis is the only actor to make the list with $41 million last year, mostly from his fourth turn as blue-collar cop John McClane in "Live Free or Die Hard." Most of the in-front-of-the-camera celebrities are talk show hosts like Howard Stern and David Letterman. At 77, Regis Philbin is the oldest person on the list with $21 million.
Producers do well, scoring three of the top five spots. In second place is Jerry Bruckheimer. His latest film, "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End," was the top-grossing movie of 2007 with $961 million in worldwide box office sales. He is reportedly working on a fourth installment for Disney. Bruckheimer's TV shows, ("CSI," "Cold Case," and "Without a Trace") continue to attract millions of viewers every week. Last year, he earned $145 million at age 63.
Steven Spielberg ranks third on our list with $130 million. At 61, Spielberg is still at the top of his game, overseeing hits like "Transformers" and "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull." This year, Spielberg's production company DreamWorks broke free of Viacom's Paramount thanks to a $500 million investment from India's Reliance bank. Under the company's new structure Spielberg could get an even bigger chunk of upcoming DreamWorks films like the "Transformers'" sequel. Read More......
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