Tom Cruise was paid highest ever amount for a single movie role and it's a mind blowing amount of money

Nobody has been paid more for their appearance in a single movie than Tom Cruise was in Top Gun: Maverick.

It makes some sense, Cruise is one of the most recognisable movie stars of all time and you couldn't really bring back the Top Gun franchise for the first time in almost four decades without him.

No Cruise, no Maverick, and without Maverick you can hardly have Top Gun: Maverick can you?

According to Variety, the upfront salary Cruise commanded for Top Gun: Maverick was somewhere in the region of $12 million to $14 million (£9.4 million to £11 million).

However, the monetary masterstroke came when Cruise also secured an agreement to get a portion of the 'first-dollar gross' from the film, meaning that he would be getting a portion of the movie's total box office take rather than the profit afterwards.

The key with these mega-payouts tends to be negotiating a percentage of proceeds from the film to either replace or supplement the salary that goes along with starring in it.

Having seen the film, Tom Cruise earning $100 million for it sounds fair enough. (Karwai Tang/WireImage)

If the movie does well, then you're going to be quids in. If not, then you'll be wishing you asked for cash upfront.

Plenty of other actors have taken a percentage of the proceeds from movies they've been in, but those deals are generally for a film's profits so the actors get a chunk of whatever is left over once production costs and the marketing budget have been paid off.

For example, Jim Carrey negotiated a 36.2 percent cut for his part in the 2008 movie Yes Man, which meant he needed the movie to make a profit for him to be paid.

The deal Cruise secured meant that even if Top Gun: Maverick hadn't made a profit he would still have earned a significant sum from the box office on top of his millions of dollars in salary.

In the end, Top Gun: Maverick brought in revenues of over $1.4 billion (£1.1 billion), meaning that Cruise was estimated to have been paid more than $100 million (£79 million) for his part in the film.

He ended up being worth the fee. (Paramount)

In total, there have only been five movies (and six productions) where an actor earned more than $100 million for being involved with them, and three of them are for Tom Cruise.

He signed good deals to make money from the backend of Mission Impossible 2 and War of the Worlds, so they sit among Top Gun: Maverick as his most financially successful films.

Meanwhile, Will Smith earned about $100 million for his part in Men In Black 3 while Bruce Willis got a portion of the profits from The Sixth Sense to bring his earnings up.

Keanu Reeves technically holds the record for the most money earned on a single production with $156 million (£123 million), but not for a single movie since The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions were made together.

It's not a bad little earner, this showbusiness thing.