The Actors Who Have Played Sherlock Holmes, Ranked By Net Worth
Sherlock Holmes is one of the most popular fictional characters of all time. When author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle first introduced the character in his novel A Study In Scarlet, he had no idea he was laying down the foundation for one of the most endearing detective series ever written. He also had no way of knowing that the character would maintain his popularity for over 100 years! So popular was the character when he was first introduced that when Doyle tried to retire the character by killing him off, the public was so outraged that he was brought back to life in another novel. The incident where Holmes "faked" his death is now a classic part of the character's story arc and has been adapted as part of the Sherlock Holmes canon, along with his tobacco addiction, violin playing, and his notoriously poor social skills.
Adaptations of Sherlock Holmes have ranged from the comical to the dramatic and there have been hundreds of radio plays, stage plays, television shows, and movies, all thanks to the 5 novels and endless amount of short stories that gave us the pipe-smoking, hawk-nosed detective. The oldest existing footage of a Sherlock Holmes film is the 1900 silent film Sherlock Holmes Baffled and the actor in the film is unknown. It would be nearly impossible to list all of the actors who have played Sherlock over the last 100+ years, so we will focus on some of the most recent and noteworthy, and see just who is the richest to play everyone's favorite tenant of 221B Baker Street.
12 Louis Hector - $1 Million
www.youtube.com/watch?v=40T5jCota7k
Out of respect, we must acknowledge the first man to ever play the detective on television. Hector played the detective in a movie called The Three Garridebs made for NBC in 1937.
11 Sir Basil Rathbone - $1.5 Million
Next to Cumberbach, Rathbone is probably the most iconic actor to have played Sherlock Holmes, and he was certainly the one who did it the most. He played the detective more than a dozen times and first played him in the classic 1939 version of The Hound of The Baskervilles.
10 Alan Napier - $1.5 Million
AKA Alfred Pennyworth in the Adam West Batman series, the accomplished British actor also played Holmes in 1949. He was in the adaptation of the Holmes short story The Speckled Band.
9 Milton Berle - $2 Million
The comedy legend played the detective only once, but it is noteworthy for being one of the first American television versions of Holmes. He played the character in an episode of Texaco Star Theater in 1949.
8 Boris Karloff - $5 Million
The man who brought Frankenstein’s monster to life played Holmes in an episode of The Elgin Hour in 1955. The episode was an adaptation of the Holmes story, A Taste For Honey.
7 Peter Cushing - $10 Million
Fans of Star Wars might be interested to know that the man who played Grand Moff Tarkin also played Sherlock Holmes a few times for both television and film. For example, he played the detective in the 1959 film adaptation of The Hound of The Baskervilles, one of the most popular of the original novels.
6 Johnny Lee Miller - $14 Million
Elementary lasted for seven seasons and the Americanized version of the detective was played by Johnny Lee Miller. The show turned his sidekick, John Watson, into a woman named Joan Watson, who was played by Lucy Liu.
5 Henry Cavil - $40 Million
Yes, Superman was also Sherlock Holmes once, and unlike every other Sherlock interpretation, he was not the main character or even the hero. In Enola Holmes, Sherlock’s sister tries to one-up him and show she is the real detective of the family. The film came out in 2020. Millie Bobbie Brown plays the detective's plucky little sister.
4 Benedict Cumberbatch - $40 Million
The most famous version of Sherlock in recent memory. Cumberbatch brought the character to life in the groundbreaking BBC series. The show was a modernized version of the detective and the show was steeped in realism, and it was one of the only times the characters acknowledged that Holmes was autistic.
3 Sir Ian McKellen - $60 Million
He only played the detective once on the silver screen, but the X-Men star was exemplary as an elderly version of the detective in Mr. Holmes. It is arguably one of the more underrated interpretations of the character. We usually see Holmes as a young or middle-aged man, never in his autumn years.
2 Will Ferrell - $160 Million
Will Ferrell did a comedy version of Sherlock with his pal John C. Reilly as Watson in the 2018 movie, Holmes and Watson. The film was critically panned and a total flop.
1 Robert Downey Jr - $300 Million
It shouldn’t come as a shock that RDJ is the wealthiest actor so far to play Sherlock Holmes. One of the few times when an American is cast to play a British character, RDJ’s work in the Guy Richie film adaptations Sherlock Holmes and A Game of Shadows was very well reviewed.
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