Forbes magazine has published its annual survey of who the most powerful celebrities in the world are. While for the last few year it’s always been Oprah, this year Angelina Jolie has muscled her way to the top. While Winfrey might win out in the money stakes, earning $275 million compared to Jolie’s comparatively lowly $27 million, Jolie comes top due to the fact that every time she hiccoughs it becomes front page news and sends blogs across the the world into a frenzy.
Interestingly, while the celebrity 100 has traditionally been a pretty male dominated list, list year the top four celebs are all women, with Madonna and Beyonce ranking next to Jolie and Winfrey. The top male celebrity, at number five, is Tiger Woods. Film figures making the top 10 include Spteven Spielberg (7), Jennifer Aniston (8) and Brad Pitt (9). Will Smith (11), Harrison Ford (17), Tom Cruise (20), Adam Sandler (16) and George Lucas (24) also made it into the top 25.
While the Forbes list is by no means definitive, it is a pretty good indicator of a star’s economic and cultural power, being collated from both their earnings and the amount of newspaper, internet and TV exposure they get. Interestingly this year, no normal celebrity managed to get the most column inches, with that honour going to Barack Obama across all forms of media (conversely he was the lowest paid of all the celebs on the list).
You can get the full list and rankings of this year’s most powerful celebrities at the Forbes website.
Oh, and if you’re wondering why we chose that picture of Jolie in Changeling, it’s because we can’t ever get enough of the hat!