Star power, 'Forbes' ranking on the wane for some celebs

0 Comments | USA TODAY, June, 2007 | by Karen Thomas

It appears being a celebrity personality isn't as lucrative as it once was.

Forbes' annual list of the top 100 celebrity power players is out, and perennial top-10 star Oprah Winfrey is No. 1 with earnings of $260 million a year.

But the Forbes list of most powerful celebrities, which considers income along with other factors such as media interest and the number of friends on stars' MySpace pages, doesn't bode well for today's starlets. "The stock is down on their brand," says Forbes' associate editor Lea Goldman.

Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie fell off the 2007 list, thanks to declining interest in The Simple Life and do-nothing albums. So did Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, who had been moving up the list from 2002 to 2006. "They no longer have the...