Dollar for dollar, Vince Vaughn is money, baby

updated 6:02 p.m. ET July 23, 2008

NEW YORK - Vince Vaughn is the best star for the buck, says Forbes magazine.

Vaughn raked in $14.73 of gross income for studios for every dollar he was paid for "The Break-up," "Wedding Crashers" and "Dodgeball," the magazine calculated for its special entertainment issue, now on newsstands.

"That's because until recently his salary was relatively low, and the films he was in, like ‘Wedding Crashers’ and ‘The Break-up,’ had modest budgets yet did extremely well at the box office worldwide ($285 million and $205 million, respectively)," Forbes said.

Forbes said it compiled the Ultimate Star Payback list by looking at the stars' last three films that opened wide in at least 1,000 theaters before 2008 and were made in the last five years.

It calculated the gross income for each film by adding half the worldwide box office and the first three months of wholesale DVD revenues and then subtracting its budget. The gross income was divided by the actor's total compensation to derive his or her payback for the movie.

Tobey Maguire ranked No. 2 on the list, with a gross income return of $13.44 for each dollar of his pay for the "Spider-Man" sequels and "Seabiscuit." Julia Roberts was in third place with a gross income return of $13.19.

Brad Pitt ranked fourth with $12.73, followed by Naomi Watts and Matt Damon ($12.16 each), George Clooney ($11.56), Jennifer Aniston ($10.48), Hugh Jackman ($9.90) and Ben Stiller ($9.50).

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The highly paid, highly bankable Will Smith — who reliably led the July Fourth weekend with a $66 million debut for "Hancock" — ranked 21st with a gross income return of $5.64 for every dollar spent on the big-budget superstar.

Nicole Kidman is at bottom of the list, at No. 35. Her high-paying roles in "The Golden Compass," "The Invasion" and "Bewitched" averaged only $1.01 of gross income.

Kidman's ex, Tom Cruise, brought in $3.99 — not altogether surprising, given the imbalance of his high salary demands with the 2007 box-office flop "Lions for Lambs."

Jim Carrey averaged $4.11 per dollar earned in "The Number 23," "Fun With Dick & Jane" and "Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events."

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