Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
The Schmooze

Adam Sandler Makes Roughly 750 Times What The Average American Family Does

There’s nothing civilians enjoy more than fawning over the wealth of people who neither know nor care about them and where there is a market, there shall be a list of the Forbes’ highest-paid actors in Hollywood.

Coming in at number one among Jewish celebrities who have conquered the American dream is Adam Sandler. The actor pulled in $50.5 million last year.

What is Sandler giving America in return for all that green? His $250 million deal with Netflix probably had something to do with it. The actor has been contracted by the streaming service to produce four original movies.

Sandler can be described as the Donald Trump of Hollywood, in that his first movie for Netflix, “The Ridiculous Six,” scored an abysmal 0% on movie rating website Rotten Tomatoes but, inexplicably, his fan base doesn’t seem to care. The film went on to become the most watched movie on Netflix in its first month. Netflix, who cares more about the quantity of its users than the quality of the art it hosts, jumped to renew the contract. Congratulations, America, you’ve won yourself 1/750 of what Adam Sandler makes per year AND the privilege of tuning in to four more of his 0% Rotten Tomatoes-rating movies.

Mila Kunis is number five on Forbes’ list of highest-paid actresses and the sole Jewish woman to make the top ten. Although she’s only one spot below Sandler (who came in at number four on the men’s list), she makes a whopping $35 million less than him because gender pay inequality doesn’t discriminate between class levels.

Becky Scott is the editor of The Schmooze. Follow her on Twitter, @arr_scott

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism. 

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.