What happened to Eddie Murphy? With past successes such as "Beverly Hills Cop," "Trading Places" and "Saturday Night Live," Murphy now brings only $2.30 to studios for every dollar he is paid. This puts the 51-year-old as #1 in Forbes' 2012 list of the most overpaid actors.

Forbes compiled the list by using data about actors' earnings from its Celebrity 100 list. It then took each actor's last three feature films and calculated the return on investment to the studios against the actor's salary. Forbes only included movies that the actor had a starring role in, and that were released in over 2,000 theaters.

Murphy's last three films "Tower Heist, "Imagine That" (what?) and "A Thousand Words (again, never heard of this) collectively only earned $196.3 million domestically. This is compared to the $316.3 million he brought in with his '80s hits "Beverly Hills Cop," Trading Places" and "48 Hours." With the exception of 2009's "Dreamgirls," the actor needs to start choosing smarter roles if he wants to revamp his career. Hopefully his next project, executive producing a small-screen version of "Beverly Hills Cop," will bring fans of the '80s hit to their TV screens.

Katherine Heigl comes in second on the list, only earning for studios an average of $3.40 for every dollar she makes. Her most recent film "One For The Money" was a major flop, bringing in only $37 million for an estimated $40 million-budget film. However, she will be featured alongside Diane Keaton, Robert DeNiro, Susan Sarandon, Amanda Seyfriend and Topher Grace in her next film "The Big Wedding," and that all-star ensemble can give her the extra boosts she needs.

Third on the list: Reese Witherspoon. Although Witherspoon is one of the most beloved, Oscar-winning actresses in Hollywood, she only brought in $3.90 for every dollar she made. She is the actress to star as the woman who is finding love, torn between two guys, unlucky in love (you get the idea) in romantic comedies, but her latest films - "How Do You Know" and "This Means War" - did not do as well as expected at the box office. "How Do You Know" was one of the worse-performing films of 2010, grossing only $49 million.

Oscar-winner Sandra Bullock is next on the list, earning $5 for every dollar she was paid. Even though America's Sweetheart's 2009 film "The Blind Side" brought in $310 million globally when it was made for just $30 million, her subsequent films "All About Steve" and "Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close" were box-office flops. However, according to Forbes:

[Bullock's representatives insist that Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close should not have been included in our calculations for the actress because she was not the star of the film. If you took that film out and added in The Proposal, her return on investment number would be much higher.]

Other actors on the list were Jack Black, Nicolas Cage, Adam Sandler, Denzel Washington, Ben Stiller and Sarah Jessica Parker, placing #5-#10 on the list, respectively.

 

Reach Entertainment Associate Editor Jenny Chao here. Follow here on Twitter here.