According to Forbes’ annual Highest-Earning Television Actors roster, the “Butterfly Effect” hunk nabbed a cool $24 million over the past year.
Kutcher’s “Two and a Half Men” partner in crime Jon Cryer took the runner-up position with a salary of $21 million, and Ray Romano scored $16 million thanks to syndication royalties from “Everybody Loves Raymond.”
Rounding out the top five are Neil Patrick Harris, who is tied for #4 with Mark Harmon ($15 million) and Patrick Dempsey in fifth place with an impressive $13 million income.
Kutcher’s massive pay on the show has given him even more money to pursue his other passion: investing. He owns stakes in tech companies like Airbnb, Foursquare and Path.
His connections in Silicon Valley haven’t helped his movie career, though. This summer Kutcher starred as Steve Jobs in a biopic about the Apple founder’s life. The film may have generated plenty of buzz but that didn’t translate to success at the box office. Jobsearned only $16 million.
Kutcher can absorb the blow. He’ll earn even more as his episodes of Two and a Half Men go into syndication, and there’s no reason for CBS to cancel the cash cow anytime soon.
Sheen’s co-stars Jon Cryer and Angus Jones also make our list. Cryer is in second place with $21 million and Jones ranks seventh with $11 million.
However, this is likely to be Jones’ last year on our list. The 19-year-old is no longer a regular on the show after a video went viral of Jones calling the show filth and telling people to stop watching. He was recently replaced by Amber Tamblyn, who plays Charlie Sheen’s character’s long-lost daughter. He’ll still earn from the show’s lucrative syndication, though.
To compile our list we talked to producers, managers, agents and other in-the-know folks to come up with estimates for how much each actor earned from entertainment-related endeavors between June 2012 and June 2013. We do not subtract for taxes, agent expenses or the other costs of being a celebrity. The research was conducted for our Celebrity 100 list.
Ranking third on our list Ray Romano. TheEverybody Love Raymond star sneaks in as a TV actor thanks to an arc on Parenthood. He still earns hefty royalties from Raymond and collects a paycheck for voicing Manny the Mammoth in the Ice Age films. We estimate Romano earned $16 million between June 2012 and June 2013.
Tying for fourth place are Mark Harmon and Neil Patrick Harris. Harris, the ultimate host, made our Celebrity 100 list for the first time this year with $15 million in earnings. Most of that comes from How I Met Your Mother. But he also starred as one of the live-action characters in this summer’s The Smurfs 2. The film was a flop in the U.S., bringing in only $70 million domestically, but it did better overseas, where it earned $251 million.
Harmon’s NCIS is a quiet hit for CBS, regularly attracting more viewers than any other scripted show on television. Most of the viewers are on the older side but the show is still a big win for CBS. We estimate Harmon earned $15 million between June 2012 and June 2013.
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