Piers Morgan is, on an hourly rate, the highest-paid actor in Hollywood history, he says. The Britain’s Got Talent judge boasts that he’s appeared in nine major motion pictures, always appearing as himself.
His screen credits include Flight with Denzel Washington, Criminal with Kevin Costner, One Chance with James Corden, World War Z with Brad Pitt, Men In Black International with Liam Neeson, Entourage with Jeremy Piven and The Campaign with Will Ferrell.
It was this last film, which he describes as “the biggest political comedy in Hollywood history,” that turned out to be his biggest payday. In the current edition of The Spectator magazine, he brags that, despite appearing on screen for just 22 seconds, “the residuals still pour in 12 years later, including $789.68 (about £610) last month alone.”
Morgan suspects that his earnings could put his hourly rate higher than the actual stars of the films, who may be paid a lot more, but are putting in a lot more work and appearing on-screen for much longer.
He tells how he told Dame Joan Collins about his earnings, and asked her: “Surely this makes me, per second of airtime, the highest-paid movie star ever?”
Piers Morgan counts Dame Joan among his many celebrity friends. In his days as a showbiz journalist, he recalled: “I became The Friend of the Stars, a rampant egomaniac, pictured all the time with famous people – Madonna, Stallone, Bowie, Paul McCartney, hundreds of them. It was shameless, as they didn’t know me from Adam.”
Perhaps Morgan’s most high-profile acquaintance is current US president Donald Trump. Morgan has interviewed the mercurial president on several occasions – including one notorious meeting when he quizzed Trump about losing the 2020 election.
Trump stormed off-set, later accusing Morgan of being part of the “fake news media.” Their bust-up seems to have been forgotten now, though, with the inveterate name-dropper writing gushing articles about Trump and hinting that he’d like a return match with the president.
“Maybe interviewing Trump and Elon together at the White House would be good,” Morgan speculated recently, adding that so far “no dates have been set.”
It would certainly be a massive coup for Morgan’s Uncensored YouTube channel, which he boosts is already attracting massive audiences.
“We just got two million from the last piece of content; before that a million, a million, two million, two million, one-and-a-half million, nearly four-and-a-half million, a million, a million,” he says.
“I can’t think of anyone in the world on YouTube — other than Joe Rogan — in the news, interview, opinion space getting numbers like that.” The earnings from his interviews could, at that rate, even begin to put his movie paycheques in the shade.
At Reach and across our entities we and our partners use information collected through cookies and other identifiers from your device to improve experience on our site, analyse how it is used and to show personalised advertising. You can opt out of the sale or sharing of your data, at any time clicking the “Do Not Sell or Share my Data” button at the bottom of the webpage. Please note that your preferences are browser specific. Use of our website and any of our services represents your acceptance of the use of cookies and consent to the practices described in our Privacy Notice and Cookie Notice.