A Summer Job in New England is How This Highest-Paid Actor Got Started

I'll start right off by telling you that New England native Adam Sandler was the highest-paid actor in 2023, yet didn't have a single movie in theaters the entire year. What the what?!?

According to Boston.com, Adam's $73 million landed him in the top spot because of his lucrative deal with Netflix. His movies have been viewed hundreds of millions of times on Netflix since he joined forces with the streaming giant in 2014.

His production company, Happy Gilmore Productions, started with a four-film deal with Netflix, and is again doing the same thing for another four.

Meanwhile, with Massachusetts' natives Matt Damon and Ben Affleck on this 2023 list of top 10 highest-paid actors, there's a fourth celeb that got his start thanks to working in New England.

Let's start with your top 10 highest-paid actors for 2023, based on an annual list from Forbes.

1. Adam Sandler ($73 million)

2. Margot Robbie ($59 million)

3. Tom Cruise ($45 million)

4 (Tie). Matt Damon ($43 million)

4 (Tie). Ryan Gosling ($43 million)

6. Jennifer Aniston ($42 million)

7 (Tie). Leonardo DiCaprio ($41 million)

7 (Tie). Jason Statham ($41 million)

9. Ben Affleck ($38 million)

10. Denzel Washington ($24 million)

Similar to Adam, best friends Matt Damon (4) and Ben Affleck (9), both from Cambridge,  have streaming to thank via Amazon, who paid $130 million for the rights to their Nike biopic, Air. Matt was also in the blockbuster Oppenheimer.

Meanwhile, Margot is at #2 (primarily for Barbie), Tom Cruise had another blockbuster in the Mission Impossible franchise, as well as Top Gun Maverick hitting streaming platforms, while Ryan Gosling was in Barbie and Jennifer Aniston's Murder Mystery 2 with Adam, as well as another season of the hit series The Morning Show on Apple+ for Jen.

Leonardo DiCaprio and Jason Statham had a few movies out, with Leo in Martin Scorsese’s Oscar-nominated Killers of the Flower Moon and Jason in Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre, Fast X, Meg 2: The Trench, and Expend4bles.

Finally, Denzel Washington found some success in the action-thriller sequel The Equalizer 3, rounding out the top 10.

However, fun fact time! Denzel was having trouble deciding on a major while he was at Fordham University playing basketball, so decided to take a semester off where he worked at an overnight summer camp as a creative arts director for Camp Sloane YMCA in Lakeville, Connecticut. He even participated in the staff talent show, where a colleague suggested he try acting.

The rest is history.