Top-earning actor
Eddie Murphy
$28,500,000
Forbes, $57M over 1988–89 (half shown)Reported
About $74 million in 2025 dollars
The top actor on the list, behind Michael Jackson, Steven Spielberg, Bill Cosby and Mike Tyson.
Forbes Starts Counting · 1980s
1989
Top-earning actress
Meryl Streep
≈ $4,000,000
About $4 million a filmEstimate
About $10.4 million in 2025 dollars
Again no actress on the Forbes list; the only women were Oprah Winfrey and Madonna.
The pictures that paid
Box office champions of 1989
By worldwide box-office gross
- 1
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
$474 million
- 2
Batman
$412 million
- 3
Back to the Future Part II
$333 million
Neither top earner was in one of the year's three biggest films.