Celebrities and Their Salaries

The President of the United States makes $200 000 a year. A Supreme Court justice gets $170 000. The average annual American household income is $34 076. And Steven Segal? He makes $10 million per picture. We want celebrities to be like us, and then we don't. We want them to inhabit a world of glamour, but we don't want them to be stuck up. We want to gaze at their big faces on the screen, yet it's our own narcissism we …

…Ruddy. "It's got to happen in the near future. It gets to be impractical at a certain point." Until then, studios will continue to shell out the big bucks to stars they see as insurance policies that guarantee box office draw and high Nielsen ratings. Comedian Sandra Bernhard summarizes our feelings best when she said, "It's out of control, inflated, bloated, and grotesque but I wouldn't mind making a million for doing a movie myself."