This is just a hunch, but we’re expecting Will Ferrell to be named as People’s sexiest man alive next year.

Because, seriously, that man is loaded. He gets paid so much money. Too much money, in fact. And he doesn’t deserve a bloody penny of it. That’s according to Forbes, at least – Will Ferrell has come out on top of a list 0f Hollywood’s most overpaid stars. The list claims that Will Ferrell only earns his investors a return of $3.29 for every dollar he’s paid.

Why such a poor figure? Well, it’s partly because Land Of The Lost flopped, partly because comedy is notoriously difficult to sell around the world and partly because Will Ferrell has cold dead eyes and a rapist’s haircut. Possibly.

What makes a good actor? Commitment? Research? An ability to emotionally connect with an audience? No, you idiot. What makes a good actor is the comparative financial return that they make for investors based on their salary. That’s why Matt Damon is a great actor and Will Ferrell is the worst, stupidest, actor to have ever walked the Earth.

According to a new Forbes list, Will Ferrell is the most overpaid star in Hollywood because he only makes $3.29 back for each dollar he’s paid. Compare this to Naomi Watts, who earns investors $44 for every dollar she’s paid, and you can see what an underwhelming amount that is.

That’s not necessarily a helpful comparison – Naomi Watts’ figure is so much higher because she’s generally paid less than Will Ferrell, her films cost less to make and she rarely carries movies by herself, plus the fact that her name is a guarantee that you’re either going to see her boobs or the outline of at least one of her nipples through a skimpy top at some point – but it must still be a worry for Will. ABC reports:

Ferrell took first place largely due to the flop of his summer 2009 movie “Land of the Lost”, which Forbes said cost an estimated $100 million to make but earned just $65 million at box offices worldwide for movie studio Universal Pictures. The movie followed a disappointing $43 million box office for Ferrell’s 2008 outing “Semi-Pro”, and $128 million for “Step Brothers”.

We should probably point out that Will Ferrell was part of a list of overpaid actors, but we’re trying not to mention that because it’ll only depress Ferrell further. For instance, Ewan McGregor came second in the list. And when was the last time you ever got excited about a Ewan McGregor film? This year? Last year? This decade? Ewan McGregor is awful, and he’s still better value for money than Will Ferrell.

Other actors on the list include Tom Cruise – a man who only makes films so that people can tell him how rubbish he is in them – and Billy Bob Thornton. Billy Bob Thornton, for crying out loud. He can’t even do an interview properly, let alone a bloody film. Seriously, Will Ferrell must be feeling terrible.

There’s only one thing for it. To turn this around, Will Ferrell will have to start taking on Naomi Watts-style roles before it’s too late. He should sign up for impossibly minor roles in bad Clive Owen films, harrowing remakes of brutally amoral German horror films and London-set films where members of the Lord Of The Rings cast beat a large number Russian gangsters to death with their bare penises. That will definitely revive Will Ferrell’s fortunes as a Hollywood commodity.

We expect a consultancy fee for this advice.

Follow hecklerspray on Twitter

Instead of a penis, Brad Pitt has a magic wand that brings fabulous wealth to anyone who he sticks it in.

It’s true. It is. OK, in all fairness it probably isn’t true. Chances are Brad Pitt does have a penis – but the bit about it making people rich is still true, though. Forbes has just published its list of Hollywood’s top-earning actresses, and the top two spots are taken up by Angelina Jolie and Jennifer Aniston.

We know what you’re thinking – where’s Juliette Lewis on the list? Look, not even Brad Pitt’s magic wand willy is that magic, OK?

If you need us at any point over the weekend, we’ll be at Brad Pitt’s house. You’ll be able to tell who we are – we’ll be dressed in a slinky frock like the one Bugs Bunny wears when he tries to woo Elmer Fudd, and we’ll be trotting up and down Brad’s driveway with half our bum hanging out and three packets of Rohypnol in our handbag.

Because, lord, look at the statistics. The last two people who Brad Pitt slept with were probably Angelina Jolie and Jennifer Aniston, and Angelina Jolie and Jennifer Aniston have just been named as the top two highest-earning actresses in Hollywood. So it’s definitely worth trying to have sex with Brad Pitt. True, we might end up being dealt a rubbish hand like Gwyneth Paltrow was and end up getting married to a whining gonk from a crap band, but that’s a chance we’d be prepared to take.

Because Brad Pitt must be the reason why Angelina Jolie and Jennifer Aniston have done so will in this Forbes list. He must be. Look at the films that Angelina Jolie and Jennifer Aniston have released in the last year – some cack about a dog, a gormless procession of slow motion explosions, a Ben Affleck film and an over-serious lot of piff that involved little more than wearing a hat and shrieking “Where’s my son?” seven hundred billion times in a row – you can’t seriously tell us that people liked any of those, can you?

But, hey, what do we know? Forbes reports:

Between June 2008 and June 2009, Jolie earned an estimated $27 million. Much of that came from her share of the profits on Wanted, but she also scored a fat upfront check for Salt. Coming in second behind Jolie is Jennifer Aniston. Aniston earned $25 million.

We should probably point out that there’s still a vast gender gulf when it comes to Hollywood earnings. Angelina Jolie might have earnt $27 million in the last year, but that’s nothing compared to the $65 million that Harrion Ford earnt in the same period of time. And he earnt it for Indiana Jones & The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull. What sort of sick world is this?

But back to Angelina Jolie and Jennifer Aniston. What are they going to spend all their money on? Well, there’s a chance that Angelina Jolie will dedicate a portion of it to her various philanthropic works. And Jennifer Aniston? Well that army of winged monkeys won’t train itself to attack Angelina Jolie by smell alone by itself, will it?

You! Follow hecklerspray on Twitter!

Some people, they say, are born powerful. Some achieve power. Others shack up with Brad Pitt and do it that way.

We’re not experts, so we don’t know which of these has made Angelina Jolie so powerful. But she is powerful. In fact, Forbes has just named Angelina Jolie as the most powerful celebrity onEarth, thanks to her ability to command exposure, and also her ability to pull a semi-articulated lorry full of bricks for a mile with her nipple.

Anyway, congratulations to Angelina Jolie, or Almighty Overlord Archduke Angelina Jolie The Invincible as she now demands to be called.

There’s no doubting Angelina Jolie’s power, is there? Obviously that’s reliant on the assumption that you equate someone’s power with their ability to a) weedle in on their boyfriend’s fame, b) sporadically go to Africa to pull sad faces for the paparazzi and c) professionally alternate between making lowbrow films that nobody likes and highbrow films that nobody watches, but whatever.

It doesn’t matter what you think about Angelina Jolie, because she’s powerful. No, scrap that – she’s all-powerful. Cross Angelina Jolie and she’ll summon up the energy from the universe and kill you with a blast of electricity that comes straight out of her eyes. Or, you know, she’ll get her bodyguard to beat you up a bit. They’re essentially the same thing.

How do we know that Angelina Jolie is so powerful? Because Forbes magazine says she is. Angelina has made the top spot of Forbes‘ annual Celebrity 100 list, beating off the likes of Oprah Winfrey, Madonna, Bruce Springsteen, Jason Orange out of Take That, Carol Vorderman, the woman off the Claims Direct advert and Ghandi. Why is Angelina Jolie so powerful? We’ll let AP explain that:

The actress grabbed the No. 1 spot on the magazine’s annual Celebrity 100 list, which ranks the rich and famous based on media exposure and career earnings over the past year. Jolie, a reigning tabloid fixture, earned $27 million, bumping her up from third place on last year’s list, Forbes said, adding that she wields more power due to high-profile turns in hit films such as “Wanted” and “Kung Fu Panda.”

Oh, that makes sense. Last year, after all, Angelina Jolie starred in Wanted, Changeling and Kung Fu Panda, so let that be a lesson to anyone who wants the sort of power that Angelina Jolie currently wields – you need to star in one identikit action film with a pointlessly generic title, one over-long piece of failed Oscar bait where all you need to do is cry and repeat “I want to find my son” endlessly for two and a half hours, and a quite-good film in which you neither physically appear or have much to do with at all.

Oh, and shack up with Brad Pitt. That last one’s probably key.

Still, Angelina Jolie being named as the world’s most powerful celebrity isn’t all bad news. It almost certainly means that Jennifer Aniston is going to do something properly mental any minute now. And bloody well hooray for that.

You! Follow hecklerspray on Twitter!

Stinking bags of bumheap like Hancock. Anything. And because of this – plus the way that Will Smith will promote his films by going on every single TV show and laughing so loudly and over-sincerely that he seems like an escaped murderer – that Forbes has called Will Smith the world’s most bankable star.

So congratulations to Will Smith. And equal congratulations Tatyana Ali from Fresh Prince Of Bel Air, who has been name as the 1,268th most bankable star. Keep living the dream Tatyana!

If you want to get a movie made in Hollywood, you need to get a star attached. And, by and large, the bigger star you get the more money you’ll make. And at the moment, if you want your movie to make more money than anything else, you need Will Smith.

Will Smith has it all – charm, charisma, drive, adequate rapping skills, suspiciously close links to the Church Of Scientology – and that’s why audiences love him. And because of this, Forbes magazine has just named Will Smith as the most banakable star in the world. How did Forbes get to this conclusion? Let’s ask it, shall we:

When ranking each actor, voters were asked to consider a number of elements regarding the actor’s participation in a film as they applied in the market at the time of the survey. Criteria used were: The amount of financing that flows to a project is significantly determined by the individual actor’s presence in a film.The individual actor’s presence in a film guarantees theatrical distribution. The individual actor’s presence significantly drives the film’s theatrical box-office performance…

This goes on, by the way. And on. We didn’t scroll to the end, but we think it might literally go on forever. Anyway, it’s just a fancy-schmancy way to say that Will Smith is powerful enough to get any movie he wants made, whether it’s an edgy superhero movie like Hancock, a thoughtfully conceptual drama like Seven Pounds or the worst idea in the entire history of mankind like the forthcoming Old Boy remake.

However, just because you can get a film made doesn’t necessarily mean that people will go and watch it. Other than Will Smith, the top five most bankable stars are Johnny Depp, Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie and Leonardo DiCaprio - who, between them, have recently made box office deadweights like The Changeling, The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford and Body Of Lies.

So, without wanting to play down Will Smith’s achievements here, it does seem that as soon as an actor gets a sniff off success, they suddenly seem to think that they can change the world by making movies about Serious Issues. It’s true with Will Smith, it’s true with Leonardo DiCaprio and – as soon as next year’s Paul Blart Saves Darfur movie is released – it’ll be true with Kevin James.

You! Follow hecklerspray on Twitter!

However, on the off-chance that your interest in the preschool children of Hollywood celebrities is down to something other that surging waves of barely-controlled paedophilia, you should take a look at the just-published Forbes annual ‘10 Hottest Tots’ lists. Just, you know, be sure to hide the magazine inside a less incriminating magazine first, like Big Droopy Knockers or Readers Disgusting BDSM Infantilism Fantasies.

And, for anyone who actually cares, Suri Cruise was named the most influential baby this year. Of course, it seems silly to rank toddlers based on their power and influence but, since Suri Cruise is the only celebrity baby able to summon the mighty Xenu to smite her foes inside his all-powerful fist, she was probably always going to make at least the top three.

This is turning out to be quite the year for the stars of hopeless pre-9/11 ‘terrorists are cool’ movie Swordfish. Halle Berry was named the sexiest women alive last month and Hugh Jackman was named the sexiest man alive yesterday. But sadly Swordfish can’t make the hat-trick, because it didn’t have any sexy children in it.

No, not sexy. Powerful. We meant powerful. Swordfish didn’t have any powerful children in it. If only they’d thought to prenatally cast young Suri Cruise in it, glory would have been theirs alone.

That’s because Suri Cruise has been named by Forbes magazine as the most powerful celebrity child aged under five on Earth in a slightly inappropriate-seeming list entitled ‘10 Hottest Tots’. Reuters explains why:

Suri received more blog mentions than any other Tinseltown child and was referenced in more than 1,300 news articles, which can help shape public opinion about her parents while also fuelling demand for what she wears, plays with and eats.

You see, Suri Cruise isn’t just the suspiciously adorable child of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes, nor an everlasting monument to Katie Holmes’ stolen pre-marital virginity, nor a tiny bag of skin who has already gained more household rights than her mother, including reduced cage-time, access to water that doesn’t necessarily come from a rabbit feeder and the right to briefly look Tom Cruise in the eye when speaking to him. Suri Cruise is an opinion former.

We’re not entirely sure what this means – perhaps she’ll get her own E! reality show soon, or maybe she’ll start publishing her own Oprah-style vanity magazine – but magazine editors are already suggesting that Suri Cruise will become even more famous in the coming year. That’s partly because people would rather look at pictures of cute toddlers than fret about their lack of money, and partly because they really want Suri Cruise to understand that her life will peak at the age of two and the rest of her time on Earth will basically be a grey icy relentless downward slope to death.

But if Suri Cruise is number one, what of the other nine of the top 10 hottest tots named by Forbes? Well, OK, since you asked:

2 – Shiloh Nouvel Jolie-Pitt

3 – Zahara Jolie-Pitt

4 – Pax Thien Jolie-Pitt

5 – Sam Alexis Woods

6 – Cruz Beckham

7 – Matilda Rose Ledger

8 – David Banda

9 – Sean Preston Federline

10 – Sam Sheen

We know what you’re thinking. No, not that someone should inform the Monopolies Commission about all the Jolie-Pitt kids fouling up the top 10, but how disappointing it is that Matilda Rose Ledger is languishing down in seventh place.

Really Matilda, we know your father died this year in tragic circumstances, but we’re really starting to think that you don’t care about how hot Forbes magazine thinks you are. It’s a disgrace. Buck up your ideas next time, you stupid three-year-old idiot.

You! Follow hecklerspray on Twitter!

Know who’s a 785th place loser, too? Facebook originator Mark Zuckerberg, that’s who. What a slacker. He’s probably all boo-hoo about being 785th place. What’s that? The thing for which he placed 785th was the list of richest people in the world?  

Well, then that’s not too shabby out of billions of people, now is it. 

People say that money can’t buy happiness, but if we were named one of the richest people in the world by Forbes magazine right now, we’d be happier than a drunk Care Bear on speed right now. But, we’re not on the list. Neither are you, for that matter, but someone who is on the list making you feel even more pathetic and unsuccessful is 23-year-old Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.  

Yeah, you read that right. 23 years old. In fact, he’s apparently the youngest person on the list who didn’t inherit money from their dead, geezerly sugar daddy (Anna Nicole Smith we’re looking down at you. Well, we have to look down because you’re dead in a grave) or anyone else. Mark Zuckerberg is a self-made man. We hate our lives.  

So, basically, Mark Zuckerberg has become a billionaire making a website that allows you throw cyber cows and chickens at people and join groups like ‘Group to stop all of these applications for all these groups’ group. Well, he’s actually made $1.5 billion dollars if you want to split hairs. Seriously. $1.5 billion dollars. For throwing cows. Man, do we feel the fool for not starting that farm animal-chucking farm website we thought about. By Mark Zuckerberg’s example, it’d probably be a lot more successful than our real-life farm animal-chucking farm.  

Wow, we just can’t get over that Mark Zuckerberg is only 23 years old. If you’re anything like we were at that age – and we know you are because we scour your Facebook profiles like neurotic ex-girlfriends looking for evidence of that new hag you’re dating in the manner for which the site was intended– you were aimlessly staring off into space wondering what to do with a college degree in Gregorian Masters of Chant, trying to figure out where in the world that smell is coming from.    

At least we can take solace in the fact that Bill Gates dropped from the number one spot where he's been for 13 years to the number three spot. Friggin' imbecile.  

Read more:  

Facebook Founder Youngest Billionaire On The Planet - People

As far as we can tell, that's been Madonna's trick, and it seems to have done OK for her – a Forbes survey has declared that Madonna is the richest woman in music, earning about $72 million a year.

Ask yourself this, though – does all that money make Madonna happy? Yes, of course it does. But does it make her look less wrinkled and veiny? No is does not. Ergo we win.

In six months' time, Madonna will turn 50. But does this mean she'll start taking up traditional 50-year-old woman pursuits like jam-making, attending WI coffee mornings and crocheting little cardigans for all the babies you've just realised you're too old to have?

No way. Because Madonna, right, is effing loaded.

OK, that's not really a big surprise – in 2006 Madonna completed the highest-grossing tour by any female in history, plus she signed that ridiculously huge record deal with Live Nation that'll keep her in leotards for the next decade. So that's this year and 2006 dealt with, but how much money did Madonna make in 2007?

According to the Forbes 'Cash Queens Of Music' list, the answer is 'a bloody great shitload'. Reuters reports:

Pop star Madonna is still the material girl, earning $72 million in a recent 12-month period to top a Forbes.com list of female singers whom the financial Web site dubbed "Cash Queens of Music." … The Web site tracked earnings in the period from June 2006 to June 2007 and said it examined concert ticket sales, merchandise revenue, album sales and earnings from ancillary products such as clothing, perfumes and endorsements.

You just have to sit back and applaud Madonna for earning a gigantic figure like that, don't you? And it's all the more impressive when you realise that she's basically a middle-aged failed star of erotic thrillers who makes her living by monomaniacally chasing every single hot new trend she gets a sniff of.

And all that's without a perfume, too. In an age when every two-bit reality TV schmo has got their own fragrance line, imagine how popular a perfume by a megastar as big as Madonna would be. Unless of course it smelt like Madonna, which we'd imagine to be a mixture of Botox and pickled vulvas.

Rounding out the Forbes Cash Queens Of Music top five, in case you were interested, were Shakira and Beyonce with earnings of $38m and $27m respectively. Proof then, that getting rich from being almost naked and jiggling around isn't something confined to the horrifically old.

Finally, let's not forget that Madonna is married to Guy Ritchie, so their household earnings must be incredible – we'd guess at least $72 million plus that £3.50 that Guy earnt cleaning windscreens at traffic lights last summer.

Read more:

Forbes.com dubs Madonna "Cash Queen of Music" – Reuters 

That's right – the annual Forbes Dead Celebrity Rich List has been published, and it's been another classic year for Elvis Presley. Elvis has managed to earn $49 million over the last year, $5 million more than his nearest rival John Lennon could muster. It's a triumphant return to the top spot for Elvis Presley, who was knocked into second place last year by Kurt Cobain, with industry experts claiming that this reflects the current public trend for favouring bloated corpses with blasted-open colons over miserable corpses with bits of their heads missing.

Elvis Presley has had quite the year. Ever since he died in 1977, the highlight of most of Elvis' years has been either when he decomposed especially slowly or when Toothless Bill the Graceland groundskeeper pounds on his grave and shouts "Guess how many times they've repackaged your Greatest Hits collection this year Elvis? Four!"

But this year was special. This year was the 30th Anniversary of Elvis Presley's death, which meant that not only did people steal his stuff and bury in a chemical toilet but they all rushed out and bought whatever Elvis-related tat his estate saw fit to hurl out, even though Elvis fans probably own it all in 25 slightly different formats anyway. And that's stood him in good stead for this year's annual Forbes Dead Celebrity Rich List, which has just been published.

You see, Elvis Presley is the daddy of rich dead celebrities. He's usually voted as the richest dead celebrity and only a last-ditch push to sell off 25% of Kurt Cobain's songwriting publishing beat him down into second place last year. But 2007 has been Elvis Presley's year, and the only way it could have been improved is if he hadn't killed himself trying to shit out a breezeblock three decades ago. He's rich, damnit! Rich! The Times reports:

Elvis earned $49 million (£24 million) in the past year, toppling the late Nirvana frontman and regaining the top spot on the Forbes.com list. Elvis’s estate continues to generate millions from music royalties, DVDs, licensing deals and tourism at Graceland, the singer’s mansion in Memphis. The website ranks 13 former celebrities according to income and proves that death is no obstacle to making money. The group collectively earnt $232 million in the past year.

Second to Elvis Presley this year was John Lennon, a man who started selling his songs online and got a giant beam of light named after him. Not that the light beam earnt him much money, of course, although Lennon is expected to top the Forbes annual 'Dead Celebrities With The Most Pointless Carbon Footprint' list when that's published next month. As for the rest of the list, it's mainly the usual suspects – Einstein, Schultz, Warhol – with the added inclusion of recently dead James Brown making his debut at number 11 with $5 million. We're sure that James Brown is thrilled by this, and thinks it more than makes up for the way congestive heart failure resulting from complications of pneumonia killed him on Christmas day.

Here's this year's list of the richest dead celebrities, according to Forbes: 

Elvis Presley $49 million
John Lennon $44 million
Charles M. Schulz $35 million
George Harrison $22 million
Albert Einstein $18 million
Andy Warhol $15 million
Theodor Geisel $13 million
Tupac Shakur $9 million
Marilyn Monroe $7 million
Steve McQueen $6 million
James Brown $5 million
Bob Marley $4 million
James Dean $3.5 million

Read more:

Dead Rich List All Shook Up As Elvis Returns To Top – Times