For the second year in a row Colombian Sofia Vergara tops the Forbes list for the best-paid actresses on television.
Star of ABC sitcom “Modern Family”, Baranquilla-born Vergara earned more than $30 million in the last year, thanks largely to her plethora of endorsement deals.
The former model has her own line at Kmart, which bagged her a $7 million advance back in November, and she’s the face of SEAR’s campaign in South America. She also makes big bucks through her endorsment of Diet Pepsi, Covergirl, Rooms to Go, and thyroid medicine Synthroid – Vergara suffers from hypothyroidism, a condition that she developed after she had thyroid cancer in 2000.
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She beat Mariska Hargitay, of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, and Big Bang Theory’s Kaley Cuoco, into joint second place. They both make $11 million, just a third of Vergara’s earnings.
The main reason for the massive difference in earnings is Vergara’s appeal to the Latin American audience. She does several Spanish-language commercials and, along with fellow Baranquilla-born superstar Shakira, is one of the most famous faces in Latin America. Vergara recently returned to Baranquilla to celebrate the city’s 200th anniversary.
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To compile the list, Forbes looked at the earnings of celebrities between June 2012 and June 2013, counting money for completed projects and contracts during the time period. The 20 top-paid TV actresses earned $183 million combined.