Don't cry Nicole: you may be overpaid, but all that's about to change

Forbes Magazine has done some research about how much money Hollywood actors are actually worth – not how much they are paid, but how much profit they generate, compared with how much they are paid. And this means that, by making a list, we can easily see which actors are the most "overpaid" – a list that lots of people will want to print, thus advertising Forbes. It's a really good piece of publicity for the magazine, because everybody likes to hear about vastly wealthy people failing, particularly during the credit crunch.

Forbes got their figures by looking at the last three films each actor had made, and found that Nicole Kidman, whose films have made a pound for every pound she was paid, is therefore the "most overpaid" actor in Hollywood – and therefore, I suppose, the world. A bit further down the list comes Tom Cruise, whose films make £4 for every pound he makes. His films, if you think about it, tend towards the blockbuster end of the spectrum, while she does a lot of more risky, arty stuff.

A bit further down the list is Jennifer Lopez, who makes £4.10 for every pound she pockets, and Jim Carrey, who makes £4.11 – not a bad return, I would think, when you compare these results with, say, city traders. After Carrey, moving upwards, as it were, through the bottom ten, we find Nicolas Cage, followed by Drew Barrymore, Will Ferrell, and Cate Blanchett, who makes almost a fiver for every pound she's paid.

I think it's pretty clear what's happening here. I once read that, if you play the stock market, you shouldn't listen to gossip that has entered the public domain, because once a stock is known to be a good bet, it has stopped being a good bet. Now, if you apply this to film stars, the same tendency will apply: once a star is known to be good box-office, he might look a little stale. Also, those who are known to have been big box-office winners in the recent past will command the biggest fees, and so their films will make less profit per dollar they earn than, say, their co-stars, or actors in successful films who are relatively unknown.

So hats off to Forbes – it certainly made me take notice. It hooks straight into the schadenfreude vibe we all feel about big-time actors, whose millions always make them seem overpaid. But they're paid that much because film-makers have made the decision to gamble on them. And sometimes – quite often, in fact – film-makers do not make good gamblers.