If her films are flops, why is Angelina Jolie still Hollywood's highest-paid actress?

Angelina Jolie at the premiere of By the Sea in Hollywood, California. Photo / Getty Images

As reviews go, they were dire. "Tepid", "pretentious", "tedious", "self-indulgent" were just some of the critics' verdicts on By the Sea, a marital drama released earlier this month in the US and earning just $300,000 to date. This represented a huge loss given its reported budget of $10 million, a figure that industry insiders put at nearer $40 million owing to its long shoot in Malta.

Who could be responsible for such a mammoth flop? Only Angelina Jolie, the highest-paid actress in Hollywood (not to mention honorary Dame of the British Empire for her charity work), who wrote, directed and starred in the film alongside her husband, and father of her six children, Brad Pitt.

Despite its double starpower, the film has so far performed even worse than that other famous folies-a-deux Swept Away, directed by Guy Ritchie and starring his then-wife Madonna, or Gigli, starring the then-betrothed Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck.

Yet if you examine Jolie's record, the disaster seems less surprising. For someone so famous (CNN and Time magazine have named her "the most influential woman in the world"), whose estimated $33 million salary for her last starring role made her the only woman in Hollywood's top 10 earners, Jolie, 40, has had few film hits.

Of these, the greatest was last year's Maleficent, in which she played Sleeping Beauty's evil fairy. The film made $758 million worldwide, but this is arguably more down to its familiar, child-friendly content than the star.

Her next-biggest hit was 2009's Mr and Mrs Smith. It was poorly reviewed but audiences flocked, possibly in the knowledge that it was during the shoot that she fell for her co-star Pitt - then married to Jennifer Aniston.

Apart from that, Jolie's biggest box-office triumphs have involved voice-overs for Kung Fu Panda and A Shark's Tale and the 2001 film Lara Croft, Tomb Raider in which she played the eponymous Croft in head-to-toe black latex. Even Girl, Interrupted, the film that, in 1999, won her a best supporting actress Oscar for her performance as a mental-hospital patient, made only a paltry $28 million. (By way of comparison, Jennifer Lawrence has starred in hit after hit in the last few years, yet her highest salary to date is the $20 million she secured for the forthcoming sci-fi film Passengers.)

Jolie's directing career is shorter, but even less stellar. Her first outing, In the Land of Blood and Honey, about the Bosnian war, made only $300,000, but is thought to have cost about $13 million to make. Her second, last year's Unbroken, made a respectable $118 million in the US but flopped internationally, was lukewarmly reviewed and - despite huge hype - received only a few Oscar technical nominations. As the critic Tom Socca observed in 2014: "You could write a comprehensive history of the past 20 years of American popular cinema without mentioning a single Angelina Jolie film."

So why did the film studio Universal support what seemed such an obviously doomed project? "Angelina and Brad are Hollywood royalty, a huge brand, whose power has nothing to do with their acting abilities," says one film insider. "They're part of a small group of stars who are box-office Teflon, making flop after flop yet still commanding huge fees and who have the studios in their palms." (Between them, the pair are worth an estimated $385 million.)

By the Sea is an American drama film written and directed by Angelina Jolie.

Other names that should ring warning bells include Nicole Kidman ("She's on the slide worldwide," the insider warns); Cameron Diaz, whose apparent star appeal barely took last year's remake of Annie into profit; and Gwyneth Paltrow, whose last "serious" film, Mortdecai, with Johnny Depp, brought in only $7 million.

"It's been years since any of these people has had a vast hit on their own merits, but their names are known internationally, they're especially big in China and Asia - where they often front huge advertising campaigns," says the insider, who works in the sales section of the industry, convincing cinema chains to buy a film.

"Also, cinema returns are only 12 per cent of the final picture. Studios make most money from things like downloads and pay-per-view, and a star name is obviously more likely to persuade browsers to watch something."

Also singled out is George Clooney who, like his friends Jolie and Pitt, is probably now better known for his humanitarian work than for his box-office power. Clooney's latest movie, Tomorrowland, cost $190 million to produce but has to date only earned about half of that back at the box office. Indeed, of the 25 films Clooney has made, only four have made significant profits. In his last big hit, 2013's Gravity, he was killed off after 20 minutes.

"If [Clooney's] movies took in a dollar's profit for every magazine cover and breathless infotainment titbit on him, they'd earn more money than they actually do at the box office," the New York Post has concluded.

Angelina Jolie voiced Tigeress in Kung Fu Panda.

Like Jolie, Clooney's directing career is undistinguished. The five films he's made have performed underwhelmingly with the last, The Monuments Men, bringing in only slim returns. So upset was Clooney, 54, by his failure that he apologised to Sony boss Amy Pascal, in a leaked email. "I fear I've let you all down. I apologise. I've lost touch," he wrote.

This last makes the movie insider laugh. "Amy [Pascal] probably knew for a long time that the film was a dud, but just as with Angelina, the studios indulge these big stars, give them money for their vanity projects to maintain good relationships."

Universal, rumour has it, backed By the Sea hoping Jolie would return the favour with a starring role in either Wanted 2 or Bride of Frankenstein, both long in development. In the same spirit, Warner Brothers reportedly made Sandra Bullock's recent passion project, Our Brand Is Crisis (produced by Clooney), so far running at a loss of around $20 million, because it wanted her to star in its forthcoming female-centric Ocean's Eleven reboot.

What makes Jolie's fireproofness even more extraordinary is that she initially came to fame as a wild child, the daughter of actor Jon Voight with a propensity for self-harming, who admitted to trying every drug "under the sun", and who passionately embraced her brother on the Oscar red carpet. Before meeting Pitt, Jolie married Billy Bob Thornton wearing a T-shirt with his name scrawled on it in her blood; for their first wedding anniversary, she gave Thornton his-and-hers cemetery plots.

Yet all this has long been buried in the hype around Jolie's selfless globetrotting and family devotion.

"Everyone knows far more about Brangelina and the kids and Angelina's charity work than they do about her movie work. Which is fine by the studios, because they bring in publicity in a way no one else could," says the film insider.

Angelina Jolie in a scene from the movie, Girl Interrupted. Photo / Supplied

"The truth," he continues, "is that for the past decade or so, Hollywood has been running scared. It's increasingly difficult to predict hits and misses." For that reason, film-making has become unadventurous, with studios sticking to tried-and-tested formulas of endless sequels, superhero and action franchises and remakes of past hits.

"There's a never-ending debate about whether big stars actually sell movies," says the sales executive. Samuel L Jackson, who has starred in several Marvel films, recently suggested that they don't: "These movies have very little to do with us, they have to do with the event."

Privately, insiders agree. "But we still need to hedge our bets, and casting a star is the best way of doing that. We hope stars will bring in some fans even to the worst turkey."