- Photo by Caroline Bonarde Ucci
#5 – Cameron Diaz ($20,000,000)
She may be a world-famous movie star today but Cameron Diaz had a pretty ordinary upbringing. She grew up in Southern California and spent a lot of time on the beach. Her mother was in the importing/exporting business and her father worked as a Field Gauger for an oil company. She went to a regular public high school, like most of us, and then started modeling when she was 16. She had good luck with modeling early on and landed some nice contracts at a young age. When she was 21 she auditioned for The Mask, even though she had no acting experience. After landing the role, she continued developing her craft by taking acting classes. But success didn’t follow immediately. Instead, she was offered a few roles in low budget indie films. Her big break finally came when she landed a supporting role in My Best Friend’s Wedding at age 25. The following year she scored the lead role in There’s Something About Mary and the rest is history. It’s easy to look at Cameron Diaz and think her success came overnight but when you take a closer look, you see that it took her the better part of a decade to hit her stride.
Photo by David Shankbone
#4 – Sarah Jessica Parker ($23,000,000)
SJP certainly didn’t have her success handed to her on a silver platter. Born into a struggling family that lived in a small mining town in Ohio, Parker has spoken openly about living on welfare and credits her strong work ethic to her upbringing. In a 2006 interview in Parade, Parker said, “Nothing in life comes easy. You have to earn everything. So you have to know the difference between what you want and what you need. I always knew I needed to work.” She studied the performing arts throughout her childhood and attended a number of schools where she was able to hone her talent. At age 12, she appeared on Broadway in a supporting role in Annie. Two years later she took over the lead role. Her first TV role, in Square Pegs, came when she was 17, but that show only lasted one season. In the three years that followed, she landed a handful of movie roles, the biggest of which was in Footloose. It wasn’t until she was about 24 years-old that her career started gaining momentum. Of course, her break-out role was that of Carrie Bradshaw in Sex and the City, at age 32. That’s over 20 years of hard work and dedication since her Broadway debut!
Photo by Andreas Tai
#3 – Meryl Streep ($24,000,000)
Did you know that a director once called her ugly? That’s right, even Meryl Streep, the legend of legends, faced rejection early on. Born and raised in New Jersey, Meryl Streep’s mother was a commercial artist and her father an executive for a pharmaceutical company. After high school, she studied drama in college and went on to star in a Broadway musical. She began auditioning for film roles with little luck and finally made her film debut when she was 27, with a small role in Julia. She then landed another small role in The Deer Hunter two years later. Her acting career wasn’t always the brilliant success it is today and early on she had to take roles she didn’t like because she needed the money. Her career finally started to take off when she was in her late twenties/early thirties, after more than a decade of perseverance.
Photo by Angela George
#2 – Jennifer Aniston ($25,000,000)
Before she was Rachel Green on Friends, Jennifer Aniston was just another teenage girl growing up in NYC and studying acting. Sure, her father was an actor who appeared on a few old soaps, but that didn’t make it that much easier for her to break into the biz. When she was 21, Aniston moved to L.A. and juggled a variety of jobs – as a telemarketer and a bike messenger – while she struggled to pursue her acting dreams. She was cast on a number of different TV shows but they all ended up getting cancelled. Rather than giving into defeat, she kept auditioning and eventually landed her infamous role on Friends at age 25, after spending the better part of a decade chasing her dream.
Photo by Michael Gross
#1 – Angelina Jolie ($27,000,000)
Would you believe me if I told you that the highest paid actress in 2009 was once just a troubled teen? It’s true. Even though her father is actor Jon Voight, Angelina Jolie did not grow up with the glamorous life you might expect. Her parents got divorced when she was a baby and her mother gave up her own acting dreams to raise her and her brother on a modest, but steady, income. Jolie studied acting from the time she was 11 and starred in a number of small stage productions. She struggled with self-confidence throughout her younger years because her she was constantly teased for being too thin, wearing glasses and having braces. She also felt like an outsider at Beverly Hills High School, where the majority of the students were from affluent families. She often wore second hand clothes, while her peers were dressed in designer labels. Jolie continued to suffer when her early efforts to launch a modeling career failed. Overwhelmed by rejection, she quit her acting classes at age 14 and formed a new dream: to be a funeral director. Her depression finally culminated when she began collecting knives and cutting herself. By age 16, she turned herself around and got back into acting. She landed her first leading movie role in the low-budget Cyborg 2 when she was 18. Her big break came with Girl, Interrupted at age 24 and then Lara Croft: Tomb Raider made her an international superstar at age 26. The going wasn’t always easy for Angelina Jolie and she didn’t make it to the top overnight – it took her 15 years until her career really began to take off.
As you can see, the highest paid actresses in 2009 weren’t born into wealth and privilege. They didn’t launch to mega-stardom overnight and they certainly didn’t have success handed to them. The five women on this list worked hard to follow their dreams, they persevered when the going got tough and they overcame rejection and harsh criticism. If they can do it, why can’t you?
