[Related: Kristen Stewart Tops Forbes List of Highest Paid Actresses]

Portman's films Black Swan, No Strings Attached and Your Highness were included in the formula that put the Oscar-winning actress over the top. Your Highness was, in fact, a flop, taking in only $25 million on an estimated $50 million budget, but that blemish did not derail her reign atop the list. Forbes also did not count Thor because Portman was a supporting actor in the title.

Forbes devised a calculation that includes an actors' earnings, box office grosses and budget estimates that fixed the Black Swan star's returns at $42.70 for every dollar she is paid.

Noted Forbes:

We looked at the last three films each actor starred in over the last three years that opened in more than 2,000 theaters, calculating the return on investment for the studios who pay his (or her) salary. We didn’t count movies where the actor was in a supporting or large ensemble role and we didn’t count animated movies. The actors who score well on this list tend to have small paydays and star in highly profitable movies.

Kristen Stewart ranked as Hollywood's highest paid actress by Forbes last June and yet, she nevertheless placed second on the return list. Not bad considering she's been paid $25 million for each of the last Twilight pics, but the overall franchise has brought in $3.3 billion.

Co-stars Robert Pattinson placed fourth while Taylor Lautner placed sixth on the list, but Stewart came out on top with her role in Snow White and the Huntsman, which grossed $400 million from an estimated $170 million budget. Pattinson's Water for Elephants grossed $118 million worldwide from an estimated $38 million budget.

The one oddity in the calculations was that Pattinson's specialty releases, Bel Ami and Cosmopolis were not factored in because Forbes said neither reached "enough theaters" to count for the list. Also, Stewart's On the Road was not factored though that film opened last weekend.
Shia LaBeouf, who topped the list in 2009 and 2010, ranked third this year.

1. Natalie Portman: $42.70 for every dollar paid

2. Kristen Stewart: $40.60 for every dollar paid

3. Shia LaBeouf: $35.80 for every dollar paid

4. Robert Pattinson: $31.70 for every dollar paid

5. Daniel Radcliffe: $30.50 for every dollar paid

[Sources: Forbes, via Huffington Post ]

Head here for high-res versions of our exclusive Lawless set photos.

Although these Lawless are only available here, the film hits DVD and Blu-ray Tuesday (November 27) with featurettes, audio commentary with director John Hillcoat and author (and Bondurant descendant) Matt Bondurant, deleted scenes and more.

They were brothers who became outlaws, and outlaws who became heroes...The three Bondurant boys (Shia LaBeouf, Tom Hardy, Jason Clarke), along with their sultry new hire (Jessica Chastain), command the most lucrative bootlegging operation in Franklin County, Virginia. The locals consider them "indestructible." But the law - in the form of a corrupt special deputy (Guy Pearce) - wants a cut of their action, at any cost. When youngest brother Jack (LaBeouf) gets a taste of power with a deadly gangster (Gary Oldman), the whole business blows sky high. Based on the astonishing true story, the Bondurant brotherhood is the stuff of legend.

READ MORE ON LAWLESS AT MOVIELINE!

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I imagine this deal going down one day on the Pain & Gain set over beers, Wahlberg in his Pain & Gain tracksuit (or maybe this short shorts outfit) and Bay in a smoking jacket, because for some reason I always picture Michael Bay in a smoking jacket. Feel the vibration!

Full press release follows; weigh in on the casting move below. Does it change your feelings on Bay's mega-blockbuster robot franchise at all? Can we now conceivably picture Transformers and Pain & Gain as connected worlds in the Michael Bay multiverse?

HOLLYWOOD, CA (November 8, 2012) – After an exceptionally successful collaboration on the upcoming “Pain and Gain,” Michael Bay has cast Academy Award®-nominee Mark Wahlberg in the highly anticipated “TRANSFORMERS 4.” The film will hit theaters June 27th, 2014.

“Mark is awesome. We had a blast working on “Pain and Gain” and I’m so fired up to be back working with him. An actor of his caliber is the perfect guy to re-invigorate the franchise and carry on the Transformers’ legacy,” said Bay.
Bay will direct the next installment in the “TRANSFORMERS” series, which begins shooting next spring. From Paramount Pictures, a division of Viacom, Inc., in association with Hasbro, the film will be produced by Don Murphy & Tom DeSanto, Lorenzo di Bonaventura and Ian Bryce, and executive produced by Steven Spielberg, Bay, Brian Goldner and Mark Vahradian.

Bay’s first “TRANSFORMERS” film was a box office sensation in 2007, opening at #1 and earning more than $700 million worldwide. His second installment “TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN” in 2009 grossed more than $830 million worldwide. In 2011, “TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON” was an even bigger hit worldwide, grossing more than a billion dollars to become the 5th highest grossing film of all time. To date, the franchise has earned more than $2.6 billion worldwide.

From acclaimed director Michael Bay comes “Pain and Gain,” a new action comedy starring Mark Wahlberg, Dwayne Johnson and Anthony Mackie. Based on the unbelievable true story of three personal trainers in 1990s Miami who, in pursuit of the American Dream, get caught up in a criminal enterprise that goes horribly wrong. Ed Harris, Tony Shalhoub, Rob Corddry, Rebel Wilson, and Bar Paly also star. The film is based on magazine articles by Pete Collins, with a screenplay by Christopher Markus & Stephen McFeely and produced by Donald DeLine, Michael Bay and Ian Bryce.

“PAIN AND GAIN” opens in theaters everywhere April 26th, 2013.

Dafoe, meanwhile, will play a supporting role in the two-part erotic Nymphomaniac, which will be released in both a hardcore and soft core version. Dafoe is currently in Hamburg, starring in Anton Corbijn's drama A Most Wanted Man.

Von Trier veteran Udo Kier, who has taken part in a number of von Trier's films including his most recent Melancholia has also joined the cast along with French actor Jean-Marc Barr (Dogville), Caroline Goodall (Schindler's List), Kate Ashfield (Shaun of the Dead), Saskia Reeves (Butterfly Kiss) and Danish actor Omar Shargawi (R).

In the film, Gainsbourg stars as Jo, a self-described nymphomaniac who reveals her story to an older bachelor played by Stellan Skarsgard.

Rumors have flown over the summer whether named actors would take part in sexually explicit scenes, though porn-star "stand-ins" have also been rumored to be engaged on camera. Shia LaBeouf fueled the rumor when he said he was ready to "go all the way" in Nymphomaniac.

[Source: THR]

As the story goes, one day on set LaBeouf knocked out Hardy and Hardy "never did that roughhouse stuff with me again." The tangle first came to light in LaBeouf's fantastically unfiltered Details interview, though that was, understandably, overshadowed by his revelation about hooking up with Transformers co-star Megan Fox and other assorted truth bombs.

Then, while promoting his MMA pic Warrior, Hardy dropped a few cheeky quotes about the incident. "I got knocked out by Shia LaBeouf, actually," Hardy said to journalists, as recounted by Den of Geek. "In Wettest County, apparently." Apparently!

So now comes Hillcoat to set the record straight.

"There was this kind of, like, this challenging brotherly thing that starts going on with him," Hillcoat admitted in an interview with Yahoo. "But yeah, there was a tussle, but it wasn't quite the thing that was described."

LaBeouf, who's yet again spilled so many juicier, more distracting quotes of late — from his acid-dropping Method acting to his embracing of real sex in Lars Von Trier's Nymphomaniac to his maybe-joke that he got the job by sending in a sex tape — tells MTV that the fistfight was borne out of love.

"That was straight love," he said. "There was a lot of love on that set in general. There was a lot of aggression in me and a lot of aggression on [Hardy's] side. We were playing brothers. There was a constant finger-in-the-ear [teasing] thing going on for a while."

[Yahoo, MTV]