Forbes Celebrity 100 Drop-Offs
Tom, Scarlett, Adam and Jessica don't wield the power they once did.
June 12, 2008— -- To many in Hollywood, it was a year filled with tension, frustration and picket lines. For one of the town's top-paid actors, Tom Hanks, it was also the year of a lost paycheck.
If all had gone as planned, the 51-year-old star would have reprised his high-profile -- and highly lucrative -- role as Dr. Robert Langdon in Sony's (nyse: SNE - news - people ) silver screen adaptation of "Angels & Demons," the prequel to Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code." But the 100-day writers' strike, which ended in February, prompted nervous studio executives to shelve the project to await script revisions. (The movie finally began filming in early June, just after the cutoff for this year's Celebrity 100 list, Forbes' annual ranking of the most powerful celebrities on the planet.)
But Hanks didn't sit idly. He produced a slew of upcoming flicks, including "Mamma Mia!" and "Where the Wild Things Are." In a case of art imitating life, he played the onscreen dad to his real-life son Colin in "The Great Buck Howard," which premiered at this year's Sundance Film Festival. And in late 2007, he headlined "Charlie Wilson's War," a star-studded political drama with Julia Roberts and Philip Seymour Hoffman. Despite a lackluster box office (the film generated only $117 million globally, according to Box Office Mojo), the film earned him a Golden Globe nomination.
But all of that wasn't enough to secure a spot on Forbes' Celebrity 100, which measures both earnings and buzz. Hanks falls off the list from his No. 11 spot last year.
Hanks is only one of many "A-list" names to drop off this year's list. Also unable to keep up with the Celebrity 100 set: bold-faced beauty Scarlett Johansson and Indy car driver Danica Patrick. Despite a buzz-worthy movie from the former ( "The Other Boleyn Girl") and an Indy car race win in Japan for the latter (the first female to do so), both came up short this year.
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