Sorry Charlie, you left a ton of money on the table.
“Two and a Half Men” star Ashton Kutcher is television’s top-earning TV actor, having raked in $24 million in the past calendar year, according to a Forbes magazine study published yesterday.
The same Forbes survey, taken 12 months ago, found that Hollywood bad boy Charlie Sheen was TV’s top “winning” dog with a $40 million take.
The hard-partying Sheen was the leading man of “Two and a Half Men” until he mouthed off one too many times to show creator Chuck Lorre last year.
Sheen’s nonstop boozing and womanizing irritated Lorre and producers. When they told him to clean up his act, Sheen kept partying and told bosses to get lost.
Producers and CBS eventually sided with Lorre, canned Sheen, and replaced him with Kutcher, who now is now TV’s top-earning actor, according to Forbes.
Kutcher’ s big TV money is just a fraction of his greater fortune, according to Forbes.
The estranged husband of actress Demi Moore is a big Silicon Valley investor, and has valuable shares in Skype, Spotify and Airbnb worth about $1 billion, according to Forbes.
This year’s TV top five was rounded out by “House” star Hugh Laurie ($18 million), “Men of a Certain Age” actor Ray Romano ($18 million), volatile “30 Rock” funnyman Alec Baldwin ($15 million) and “NCIS” heartthrob Mark Harmon ($15 million).
The rankings shined a light on the power of reruns and syndication.
Most of Romano’s money came from the seemingly nonstop showings of “Everybody Loves Raymond” on TBS and independent stations.
No. 6 Tim Allen, now on “Last Man Standing,” earned a healthy chunk of his $14 million in reruns of “Home Improvement.”