You won't believe how much Julia Roberts was paid for Valentine's Day rom-com

If you’ve ever wondered how absolutely amazing it is to be an Oscar-winning, highly sought after Hollywood star, then listen up.

Given it’s the day of love there are plenty of you who are likely to sit down and watch the star-studded movie Valentine’s Day tonight – either with your other halves, or with your gal-pals over a glass of wine and tub of ice-cream.

And if you’ve seen it before you’ll know that Julia Roberts may have only had a relatively small role in the rom-com. But the 51-year-old was actually paid a staggering $17k a word.

The actress was only in this giant ensemble piece for roughly six minutes, and played the role of Captain Kate Hazeltine, who sat in a plane for most of her time on screen.

But when they want you, they want you.

New Line Cinema paid Julia $3million USD ($4.2m AUD) up front for her role.

That comes out to an astonishing $11,000 per second of screen time, or roughly $700,000 a minute. Verbally, it’s a minimum of $16,800 per spoken word.

They also promised to add three per cent of the gross earnings of the movie to that. The film was a huge box office success and she wound up extending her earnings on the flick to about $14 million.

That’s $14 million for what was basically an extended cameo.

Julia Roberts and director Gary Marshall had already teamed up for cult classics Pretty Woman and Runaway Bride, so it’s no surprise he wanted her on board for this movie as well.

According to insiders Julia agreed to appear in the film as a favour to Marshall, who’d made her a star, Vulture reported back in 2010 when the film was released.

After Julia was on board, casting the rest of the film was much easier, and Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Garner, Ashton Kutcher, Taylor Lautner, Taylor Swift, McSteamy and McDreamy et al signed on quickly.

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