Johnny Depp's film acting career might have fallen on hard times following accusations of abuse made against him by ex-wife Amber Heard, but the actor's high-profile endorsement deal with the Dior Sauvage men's fragrance will keep his mortgages paid for years to come.
Johnny just reportedly signed a new deal with Dior that will pay $20 million per year. That will be the largest yearly endorsement contract of all time for a fragrance.
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Johnny Depp has been the face of Dior Sauvage since 2015. The company didn't cut him loose after his reputation plunged, even keeping him on after he lost his 2020 libel suit in the UK against The Sun. Then, last year, Depp won his US defamation suit against Heard herself, which likely contributed to his new lucrative deal with the brand.
After Depp's legal win, sales of Dior Sauvage "skyrocketed."
Bernard Arnault, the world's richest person and CEO of Dior parent company LVMH, specifically cited Depp's image as one of the primary reasons for the "remarkable success" of the fragrance.
Depp will reportedly earn $20 million per year over three more years as the face of Sauvage, which puts him above such other high earners in the fragrance world like Robert Pattinson, who made a reported $12 million to star in a campaign for Dior Homme, and Brad Pitt, who earns $7 million per year from the makers of Chanel No. 5. Most A-list cologne campaigns pay celebrities somewhere in the range of $2 million and $4 million, which gives Depp's monster Dior deal an even more surprising perspective.
As to whether the deal could be a harbinger of Depp's return to Hollywood leading man status, that remains to be seen. For now, he'll have to be satisfied as the highest-paid men's fragrance spokesperson in the history of the industry.
