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.

Edyta Jastrzebska

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Source: The Sixth Sense, M. Night Shyamalan, Buena Vista Pictures Distribution, 1999

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.

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Author: Edyta Jastrzebska

A graduate of journalism and social communication as well as cultural studies. She started at Gamepressure.com as one of the newspeople in the films department. Currently she oversees the Gamepressure movie&TV newsroom. She excels in the field of film and television, both in reality-based and fantasy themes. Keeps up with industry trends, but in her free time she prefers to watch less known titles. Has a complicated relationship with popular ones, which is why she only gets convinced about many of them when the hype around them subsides. Loves to spend her evenings not only watching movies, series, reading books and playing video games, but also playing text RPGs, which she has been into for several years.