Real Name: Clara Peller
Salary Deal: $500,000 per year
Grandma taking home the bacon! This senior ad actor, Clara Peller, was the woman who famously asked “Where’s the beef?” in response to other fast food burgers. The catchphrase was an instant hit, and you might even still hear it today if you listen in the right places.
Peller earned half a million dollars for doing so, and Wendy’s locked her up for good. She started acting in the spots in 1984 but sadly passed away only three years later at the age of eighty-six. Before striking it big on TV, Peller was a manicurist for thirty-five years.
The Black Allstate Guy
Real Name: Dennis Haysbert
Salary Deal: $3-$4 million per year
Allstate has a number of well-known campaigns to get people to remember the name, but Dennis Haysbert appears in all of them. At least, his voice does. He's the guy with the voice richer than chocolate pudding who asks you if you're in good hands.
His booming voice can also be heard in movies such as “Major League” and TV shows like “24,” just to dip our toe into this actor's long history. He's been a spokesperson for Allstate for some time, and they want him to stay around – they're paying him seven figures to keep him from leaving.
Lil' Sweet From Dr. Pepper Ads
Real Name: Justin Guarini
Salary Deal: $250,000 per year
If you've caught one of the recent Dr. Pepper ads, you might have watched singer Lil' Sweet belt out a tune for this soft drink. He's played by professional singer Justin Guarini, but you'd already know that if you had been watching American Idol since the very beginning. Guarini was number two in the show's first season, losing to Kelly Clarkson in the final elimination.
His falsetto is earning him a quarter of a million dollars thanks to Dr. Pepper, but he's also putting out plenty of his own music, and a CEO of the company Profit Under Pressure LLC, which serves leaders and influencers for the brand management. He's also a constant face on and off-Broadway in numerous theater roles.
Billy Mays for Oxiclean
Real Name: Billy Mays
Salary Deal: Approximately one million per year
You know him, you love him, it's Billy Mays. Even if you weren't interested in OxiClean as a product, you might have turned into these half-hour infomercials just to sap some of the energy off of one of the most famous pitchmen in TV history. Mays ran a one-man production company, producing and starring in the ads himself to save costs. And that was important since each ad cost something like thirty thousand dollars to film.
But Mays was making it back and then some: at the time of his early death, his net worth was around ten million dollars, leading people to estimate that he was earning a million dollars a year to shill cleaning products and much more.
Captain Obvious From Hotels.com
Real Name: Brandon Moynihan
Salary Deal: Estimated $180,000 per year
There are lots of recurring characters in TV ads these days, but one of the funnier faces is that of Captain Obvious. His quick wit and clever writing helped elevate the brand above just another website in the crowd. Brandon Moynihan gave the obvious statements of his character earth-quaking weight.
The character, complete with an elaborate costume, debuted in 2014, and Moynihan has been part of the character ever since. While this is Moynihan's only high-profile gig, he's estimated to be earning somewhere around two hundred thousand dollars a year to spout straight facts to help people find hotels at a cheaper price.