Star Wars has made a lot of people very rich. There are dozens of actors who can credit their careers to the part that they played in the Star Wars saga. But of all the actors to ever appear on screen in a Star Wars movie, which one is the richest as a result of their work in a galaxy far far away?
There are a lot of names to go through and we can’t check on everybody, but there are a few obvious contenders. First of all, let’s check on the big three. Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher and Harrison Ford are the three actors who were attached to the Star Wars brand from the moment that it hit big. They would supposedly have the most time to accumulate wealth after their success in Star Wars. (For the actors who have passed on, we will use their last reported net worth.)
Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher aren’t No. 1
Checking on the net worth of the three actors reveals some interesting information. Despite Mark Hamill being the undisputed main character of the original trilogy. He is actually the least rich of the three. Of course, $18 million is nothing to sneeze at, and it appears that Mark Hamill is doing quite well for himself, but his $18 million and Carrie Fisher’s reported $25 million pale in comparison to Harrison Ford’s $300 million reported net worth.
Obviously, of the three actors, Ford’s career is the one that’s exploded the most since they all starred in the same movie together back in 1977. His net worth doesn’t just come from his work in Star Wars but from the other dozens of blockbusters that he has appeared in over the years. Throughout the eighties and much of the nineties, Ford was one of the most in-demand actors, and is one of the few actors to ever get a salary of $20 million for a single picture. When you add deals where Ford was able to negotiate part of the movie’s prophet he got some paychecks that were even higher. For example, it’s estimated that Ford was paid in the ballpark of $65 million for the fourth Indiana Jones movie.
It’s interesting to note that after Harrison Ford, the second richest actor to come out of the first trilogy isn’t Hamill or Fisher but is, in fact, Alec Guinness. His reported net worth of $100 million by the end of his life was the result of him getting 2.25% of the prophets for the original Star Wars movie, making him the highest-paid actor for work specifically relating to A New Hope.
Sequels: Adam Driver net work and more, still not No. 1
So far, none of the actors from the sequel trilogy have come close to being worth what the actors from the original trilogy have obtained. According to Celebrity Net Worth, Of the four leads, Adam Driver is the one who’s sitting at the top of the list with around $16 million. Oscar Issac isn’t too far behind, around $10 million, with Daisy Ridley, in third place and John Boyega in fourth.
In a bit of sad news, the most wealthy actor of the new generation of Star Wars heroes is probably Billie Lourd who played the character of Lieutenant Connix due to the fact that as Carrie Fisher’s daughter she was the sole heir of her mother’s estate when Fisher passed away in 2016.
That leaves us with the stars of the prequel trilogy. While many of the stars of the prequel trilogy have greater net worths than those of the sequel trilogy (after all, most of them are older and have been working in Hollywood longer) none of them are able to reach the level of Harrison Ford. One person does come close though.
The highest-paid actor in Star Wars…
Samuel L. Jackson, who portrays the Jedi Master Mace Wandu, currently has a net worth of around $250 million, making him the only person within striking distance of Ford’s $300 million. However, while his personal worth might not meet Ford’s $300 million, Samuel L. Jackson is actually one of the highest-grossing actors of all time, meaning that even if he didn’t make the most money his movies did at the box office.
However there is one person who has acted in a Star Wars movie that has far surpassed both Samuel L. Jackson and Harrison Ford, in fact having a net worth higher than both of there’s combined. And he was only in one scene of one Star Wars movie. For those paying extra close attention in Revenge of the Sith, there is a character named Baron Papanoida who appeared briefly in the Opera house. This character was played by none other than the film’s director George Lucas himself, making his only appearance in a Star Wars movie.
Because of this scene that lasted only a second or two, that makes George Lucas technically the richest person to ever act in a Star Wars movie with a net worth somewhere in the ballpark of $10 billion dollars. Of course, he didn’t exactly earn most of that for his skill as an actor, and a great deal of that money was the result of selling Lucasfilm to Disney, but it seems that once again, when someone has a question about Star Wars, the answer always seems to come back to George Lucas.