Whitney Houston Scored An Impressive Payday For Denzel Washington's Underrated Christmas Movie
As a singer, Whitney Houston needs no introduction. As a Christmas movie star, though, she may come across as somewhat more obscure. Despite this, she found success on that avenue of life as well. Not only did she star in the surprisingly good 1996 Christmas film "The Preacher's Wife," but she also did so opposite the great Denzel Washington, and earned plenty of money for her efforts.
A remake of the 1947 film "The Bishop's Wife" (itself based on the 1928 book of the same name), "The Preacher's Wife" is a fantasy comedy-drama about Henry Biggs (Courtney B. Vance), a stressed-out reverend who's going through a crisis of faith while his church is standing in the way of a real estate mogul's (Gregory Hines) construction project. Fortunately, an angel named Dudley (Washington) and Biggs' wife Julia (Houston) are there to support the preacher. Unfortunately, it seems that the two are also falling in love. It's a Christmas movie, of course, so despite its potential for heartbreak, the ending is happy — much like Houston's bank account after she took the role. In fact, her salary for "The Preacher's Wife" was an impressive $10 million.
For context, this was back at a time when film star paychecks were ballooning across the industry, with Jim Carrey commanding as much as $20 million per movie. Still, when you consider that the era's top-earning starlet, Demi Moore, was paid $12.5 million for her starring role in "Striptease," Houston's $10 million payday for a relatively low-stakes holiday film is an impressive haul by any standards.
The Preacher's Wife was just one of Houston's notable roles
Whitney Houston was only 48 years old when she tragically died in 2012. Thanks to the 2022 music biopic "Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody" and the same year's clearly Houston-inspired Netflix movie "Beauty," she has remained a powerful presence in the film industry after her death, but "The Preacher's Wife" was far from her only noteworthy film project during her lifetime.
Houston's most famous movie is her acting debut, "The Bodyguard." Though Hollywood bigwigs warned Kevin Costner against casting Houston for the 1992 romantic drama about celebrity singer-actor Rachel Marron (Houston) and her ex-Secret Service bodyguard Frank Farmer (Costner), the movie's worldwide box office haul of $411 million against a $25 million budget speaks for itself. Apart from propelling Houston toward an even brighter limelight than before, the music-filled film is full of great tunes that earned it two Academy Award nominations. It also gave Houston her signature song, the Dolly Parton cover "I Will Always Love You" — though not before Costner had to defended Houston from pushback when her record label disliked the song's opening.
Apart from "The Bodyguard" and "The Preacher's Wife," the acting leg of Houston's career is remembered for her role as Savannah in Forest Whitaker's 1995 comedy-drama "Waiting to Exhale." She also played the Fairy Godmother in the 1997 TV movie "Rodgers & Hammerstein's Cinderella." Her final movie role was in Salim Akil's music drama "Sparkle," which was released in August 2012 — just a few months after her death.