Vince Vaughn: Is this really the biggest star in Hollywood?

The US business magazine Forbes published its Top 35 "Ultimate Star Payback" league table last week. It calculated a star's value by looking at the three most recent movies of actors who starred in films that opened on more than 1,000 screens in the five years to 1 January this year.

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

The big surprise was that Vaughn, nowhere near the highest-paid actor over this period, came out on top. Forbes calculated that his three films, Dodgeball, Wedding Crashers and The Break-up, made his employers $14.73 for every dollar he was paid.

Nicole Kidman came bottom, earning just $1.01 per movie, while her ex-husband Tom Cruise fared only slightly better, scraping in at No 33 with just $3.99 per movie.

So should Vaughn now be asking why he's not earning $80m a year, like Will Smith? According to Forbes, the answer would appear to be yes, but many actors are already crying foul and questioning how worthwhile the list is.

The criteria used by Forbes ensured that there are some notable absentees. Hilary Swank, 34, doesn't appear in spite of two Oscar wins for Boys Don't Cry and Million Dollar Baby. Swank says that being a "two-time Oscar-winner doesn't mean you make a lot of money". She backs this up by revealing that, in her Oscar year for Boys Don't Cry, "I made $3,000."

Bruce Willis is another questioning the criteria. The star of Live Free or Die Hard, Perfect Stranger and 16 Blocks, who made $6.68 for each dollar paid, uses the art vs commerce argument to back up the claim that money bears no relation to good movie-making. "I work for free sometimes, or I work for scale just because I want to do the film. I have never made money an issue. I am lucky when I get paid a lot. The first three Die Hard films have grossed somewhere around $1bn, and if you are responsible in part for a film like that having success, I think you deserve to get paid."

It's funny to think of the action hero Bruce Willis talking up artistic merit in an industry where money talks, and the trade press is filled with articles telling the world just how much money a movie has made over the weekend.

But Willis's criticisms are not without merit. Scratch beneath the celluloid and it becomes clear that this list is about lies, damned lies and statistics. First, it favours actors who appear in mega-franchises. That's why Spider-Man star Tobey Maguire comes in at No 2. But Maguire would slide far down the list if you took Spider-Man out of the equation - and really, we have to ask, how much credit for the total box-office can go to an actor whose face is covered by his superhero costume for much of the picture?

There's also the small matter of the marketing budget for Spider-Man, and all those special effects and technical staff that helped to give it its wow factor. To say that Maguire was the driving force for audiences is simply crazy.

If you were to compile the list next year, Gary Oldman might be riding high with his appearances in the Harry Potter and Batman films. But the futility of that becomes apparent when you look at films where there are no special effects, no magic and no bats propping him up. Having Oldman starring may not even guarantee a cinema release, as the Oldman-produced Tiptoes attests.

The question of how much of a film's box-office is attributable to its stars rather than the movie as a whole is not dealt with by Forbes. Hollywood films are collective efforts; the idea that a director is in total command is a myth. There has been no polling done by Forbes on what actually enticed audiences to a movie. There are many reasons behind the choice to see a certain film - it may be the next part of a franchise, a favourite comic-book character, good reviews or an awesome marketing campaign.

Studios do their own polls to assess the payment of their workers, and access to these figures would be far more relevant than the Forbes list in working out how much bang you get for your bucks. There is, in fact, no exact science to work out an actor's worth.

Forbes's own article accompanying its list acknowledges that it isn't without its faults. Five years ago, Vaughn was largely unknown to anyone who hadn't seen Swingers. His salary reflected this, and over the past five years when his star has been on the rise his pay has increased, albeit without hitting the heights of the action stars. He is still a long way from earning to his full capacity, so any statistic that is based on a multiplication of his salary is going to be favourable to him.

A good contrast to Vaughn is Julia Roberts. Third on the list, and the highest-ranked woman, she earned $13.19 for each buck paid. She's earning to her full capacity and still raking in money, which might explain why she is the top-ranked actress as well. Let's see how well Vaughn does when the rather larger pay packet he received for appearing in the relative flop Fred Claus affects his numbers next year.

Another factor not considered is that the upper echelons of Hollywood's A-list will not appear in a movie unless they have some sort of interest in relation to the total box-office. Tom Cruise takes a percentage of profits, and this ensures that his pay in relation to box-office is lower - the better the profit, the more he earns. If we were to stop using multiplication in assessing a star's pay and just took the amount of profit a film made versus a star's salary, a different picture would emerge - as it also would if the star's pay-cheque in relation to the movie's budget should be taken into account when assessing how much of the gross box-office value is to be found there.

In the end, the arguments over pay are academic; you're worth whatever someone will pay. The success of The Dark Knight would push Christian Bale high on a Forbes list next year, but outside the Batsuit he's box-office poison. Put Will Smith in a movie, and there's always an audience.

Forbes should have included an actor's three worst-performing movies as a balance. But why do that when they can create a money list that's pure Hollywood?