Arnold Schwarzenegger was paid fifteen million dollars for his role in Terminator 2, and since he only spoke exactly seven hundred words, he earned over twenty-one thousand dollars per word.

A closer look

Arnold Schwarzenegger was paid fifteen million dollars for his role in Terminator 2, and since he only spoke exactly seven hundred words, he earned over twenty-one thousand dollars per word. This means the studio essentially financed a small European nation's GDP just to hear a bodybuilder mutter his catchphrase with a heavy Austrian accent. Writers in Hollywood spend decades agonizing over complex dialogue, only to be financially humiliated by a massive cyborg whose emotional range consists entirely of staring blankly and occasionally shooting someone in the kneecaps. It is the ultimate capitalist victory to realize that refusing to speak is the most lucrative acting technique ever invented by humanity