Actors have a kind of legally-enforced monopoly. They're not employees you hire, they're products you buy.

If you want to make a movie staring Nicole Kidman, you have to pay whatever Nicole Kidman wants you to pay. You're legally forbidden from hiring an "off-brand" person and making her look indistinguishable from Kidman.

If you want to hire a Scala programmer, there's plenty of easily-replaceable people willing and able to do that job. No single person dictates how much money Scala programmers make.

Famous actors are basically a category that they're the only member of, and so they can set their prices. You can switch to a different category )(just as you can switch from Scala to Typescript) if one becomes too expensive, but that too carries some expense.

Franchises have a similar problem. If all your friends are watching Game of Thrones, you too want to watch Game of Thrones, even if there are other shows which are just as good. This means the Makers of GoT can dictate GoT prices, because the government gives them a legal monopoly on GoT distribution.

It's celebrity. People want to imagine themselves like these icons they've built, even if only through the laziest of efforts. I wonder if it's an innate human trait to aspire to be like those we admire.

I don't want fame, but if I did I would want a lot of money to give up my freedom to be chased by paparazzi for the rest of my life.

There's certainly a lot of actors that seem to just phone in a performance and are mainly hired due to their looks and high profiles, but don't forget about the actors that can elevate just about any role that they're in due to their skills and artistry.