Cruise May be Crazy, but He Still Rules the World

Oh, happy day: Forbes has released their list of the 100 most powerful celebrities in the universe US! Thank goodness someone is around to quantify just how important everyone in Hollywood is -- what would we do without a ranking for, say, Steven Spielberg? (He's sixth. Don't you feel better now?) Because I'm sure you're all holding your breath in collective anticipation, I'll end the suspense: Tom Cruise is #1. Woo hoo! It's so nice to know that famous people don't suffer for being crazy.

Other Hollywood names (conveniently collected here and here) on the list include Jennifer Aniston and Angelina Jolie who, at the end of what I'm sure is a very complicated mathematical process, found themselves -- gasp! -- with exactly the same power ranking!* No manipulation there, right Forbes? Their man Brad Pitt, meanwhile, beats them both by coming in at #20. At the other end of the scale is poor Mel Gibson, who was ranked third last year on the strength of his combined love for Jesus and Hollywood (and their collective love for him) -- he's fallen completely out of the top 100.

*If you actually wonder how the rankings are determined, here's Forbes' summary of their process: "To generate the list, we used a combination of factors including income, Web references as calculated by Google, press clips as compiled by Lexis/Nexis, TV/radio mentions from Factiva and the number of times a celebrity's face has appeared on the cover of 26 major consumer magazines. Earnings estimates are for June 2005 to June 2006 and are dollars earned solely from entertainment income. Management, agent and attorney fees have not been deducted."