6. John Travolta – Forrest Gump – $70 million
As you will shortly discover, the 1994 critically acclaimed drama Forrest Gump was on the offering to a number of actors before it finally settled on Tom Hanks’ desk. But perhaps the financial package was a turn off because while it ended up being a whopping $70 million, that was formulated from a profit share – raking in millions a week at the box office, something that was never guaranteed during production.
The first to pass was Saturday Night Fever and Grease star John Travolta, a man who was in the middle of a slump in his illustrious career. He would end up reviving his lagging filmography that very same year with the edgy Quentin Tarantino masterpiece Pulp Fiction, a movie that is largely credited with a rejuvenation of Travolta as a star following a lean spell on the big screen. But that project did not come with $70 million big ones, neither did it come with an Academy Award for Best Actor and Best Picture like it did for Hanks and Forrest Gump.
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