Oprah Winfrey Named Highest-Paid Celebrity—but No. 2 Is a Surprise

Oprah Winfrey may have retired her namesake talk show for good in 2011, but she's still rollin' in the dough as the titular head of her own TV network.

The daytime legend has topped Forbes' list of the highest-paid celebrities for the fourth year in a row with $165 million earned between May 2011 and May 2012.

The news comes even after OWN, her fledgling eponymous cable channel, has faced disappointing ratings.

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That prompted her to rethink OWN's lineup—like deciding to pull the plug on The Rosie Show in March. Winfrey later admitted to pal Gayle King on CBS' The Early Show, "If I were writing a book about [running a network], I could call the book 101 Mistakes."

While she's still queen of the bling, breathing down Oprah's neck is a guy famous for making a trilogy based on a line of toy robots in order to sell…a line of toy robots.

The magazine listed Michael Bay in second place with $160 million during the same period, largely on the box office strength of Transformers: Dark of the Moon, which grossed more than $1.1 billion worldwide and for which he had major back-end points.

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After his twofer of War Horse and Tintin, Steven Spielberg took the third spot with $130 million in revenue—a large portion of which comes from residuals from his movies as well as various DreamWorks-produced TV shows (Smash, Terra Nova anyone?).

Mega-producer Jerry Bruckheimer proved his Tinseltown worth netting $115 million, courtesy of more than $1 billion in ticket sales from last year's Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. We imagine he'll likely tally even better next year with his remake of The Lone Ranger starring Johnny Depp as Tonto and Armie Hammer as the titular hero.

Rounding out the top five moneymakers was rap mogul Dr. Dre, who raked in $110 million, much of that from his Beats by Dr. Dre headphones, which generated some controversy at the London Olympics a few weeks back.

Other celebs making the top 10 were filmmaker Tyler Perry, Howard Stern and Simon Cowell.  It's also notable that out of the top 21, 19 of them were men. The only other woman to make the cut besides Oprah was Britney Spears, coming in at 20

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Posted: at 28-08-2012 04:35 PM (11 years ago) | Gistmaniac

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Posted: at 29-08-2012 05:24 AM (11 years ago) | Addicted Hero