The Fast and the Furious movies are still burning serious rubber with its star-power fueling for box office domination. Forbes reported that Vin Diesel tallied $1.6 billion in global ticketing receipts, ranking him the top spot as the highest grossing actor of 2017.
The 47-year-old Diesel snagged the position thanks to the massive success of the franchise's eight installment, Fate of the Furious, which grossed $1.2 billion at the box office. The lead actor, who plays Dominic Toretto in the Furious films, edged out costar Dwayne Johnson for the number one position. The Rock came in at number 2 with earnings of $1.5 in global ticketing receipts.
The news comes as a celebration for Diesel, who has struggled for years in Hollywood as they tried to identify him for specific roles, like the time the actor was turned down by an African-American director of a beer commercial for being "a little light." After being encouraged to try out for Hispanic roles, lacking Spanish speaking skills limited his options. "It was very hard to have Hollywood look past the ambiguity of me," he says. "Little did I know it wasn't my time yet. The world wasn't ready for a multicultural megastar."
If the box office is any indication, the world is now embracing the internationally relatable actor.
Diesel told Forbes in a 2015 interview that the success of the franchise could be attributed to the multi-cultural cast. "The whole point [of The Fast and the Furious] was to diversify Hollywood and in some ways change the face of Hollywood," he said.
Gal Gadot snagged the third spot, making her the top-grossing female actress of 2017 with her earnings tallying at $1.4 billion. Her turn as Wonder Woman captured the hearts of filmgoers in the movie that grossed $822 million worldwide as the highest ever live-action superhero movie directed by a woman, Patty Jenkins.
Forbes explained the process of coming up with the numbers in compiling their list of top-grossing actors.
To calculate the ranking of top-grossing actors, we added up the 2017 global ticket sales of major actors’ films as of December 26th, 2017, using data from Box Office Mojo. We did not count animated movies where only actors' voices were used and only included actors who were top-billed or had the most screen time.
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