25 Years Ago, Bruce Willis Was Paid Such an Absurdly High Salary for The Sixth Sense That to This Day Almost No One Has Managed to Top It
Bruce Willis is one of the highest paid actors. His high place in this group was secured by M. Night Shyamalan's The Sixth Sense, for which he received a high salary.
Bruce Willis is well known to audiences around the world as an action movie star, however, he has proven that he can excel in other genres as well. The actor has shown that he can also use his talent in more complex roles, such as the one in The Sixth Sense, which has become a cult film.
M. Night Shyamalan's movie was a gigantic success and cemented his place in cinema, as was Willis himself, who played the lead role in the film. The Sixth Sense earned $672.8 million worldwide (via Box Office Mojo). Not surprisingly, the actor was lavishly rewarded for his performance in such a huge hit. In addition to being offered $14 million for his participation, Willis also received additional money after The Sixth Sense hit theaters – these included various perks and a generous cut from the earnings of the film itself.
This brought Bruce Willis' salary to a final total of $114 million, as we learn from the book George Lucas's Blockbusting: A Decade-By-Decade Survey of Timeless Movies Including Untold Secrets of Their Financial and Cultural Success. His salary for The Sixth Sense earned him second place on the list of highest-paid actors.
Ahead of him was only Keanu Reeves with his earnings for Matrix Reactivation and Matrix Revolutions, two films for which he reportedly received $156 million. So, if you take into account the earnings for only one film, Willis can be considered the highest-paid actor in history. This hasn't changed in 25 years, when more and more expensive productions began to appear in theaters.