15 Celebrities Who Are Even Richer Than You Imagine
Written by
Joel Anderson
Edited by
Rikki Elliot
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Wealth and celebrity status often go together. For big money names like Elon Musk, Oprah Winfrey, Warren Buffett or George Lucas, you would assume they are insanely rich — and you would be accurate. However, when a low-key celeb who hasn’t crossed your mind in a decade racks up that kind of dough, things get interesting.
Some of these names aren’t the biggest in the biz, but that is no indicator of the size of their bank account. The people on this list, both mega stars and some you’ve likely forgotten, have become some of the richest celebrities around — with an even more surprising amount of money in the bank than you would assume.
Andrew Shue
- Net Worth: $20 Million
That’s right, Billy Campbell from “Melrose Place” is worth nine figures. After his career on television, Shue went on to co-found the popular website CafeMom with childhood friend Michael Sanchez, which rebranded to CafeMedia in 2015 and, as of 2020, boasted some 164 million unique visitors a month to its websites.
In addition, CafeMedia ranked as one of the top sites for parenting, food and home by Comscore.
Daisy Fuentes
- Net Worth: $75 Million
It’s probably a safe bet that Cuban-born Daisy Fuentes is the wealthiest former MTV-VJ by, well, a lot. In addition to being Revlon’s first Latina spokeswoman, Fuentes has a successful clothing and accessory line.
Jessica Alba
- Net Worth: $100 Million
You expect Jessica Alba to be rich, but not one of the richest actresses of all time — even though she’s worked in film and television since she was 13. Although Alba hasn’t had a major box-office smash since the 2000s, she executive-produced and starred in “L.A.’s Finest,” a Spectrum original series for two seasons.
In addition to steady movie paychecks, Alba co-founded The Honest Company, a maker of green household products.
Rowan Atkinson
- Net Worth: $150 Million
Rowan Atkinson’s Mr. Bean and Johnny English characters were a quirky oddity in America, but they were pop-culture staples across the pond. So was “Blackadder,” a sitcom Atkinson appeared in from 1983 to 1989.
He’s not at that peak of fame anymore, but Atkinson’s work continues, and his net worth has more than doubled since then.
Amitabh Bachchan
- Net Worth: $400 Million
Plenty of Americans might underestimate just how popular Indian cinema is globally, but Bollywood is wildly successful throughout the world. Actor Amitabh Bachchan got his start with “angry young man” roles in the 1970s and went on to appear in more than 100 films by the early 1980s.
Today, he has more than 240 credits to his name, including recent films “Fakt Mahilao Maate” and “Runway 34.” He also founded his own production company, the Amitabh Bachchan Corporation.
Gisele Bündchen
- Net Worth: $400 Million
Brazilian-born supermodel Gisele Bündchen is best known in the U.S. for being a Victoria’s Secret model and marrying NFL quarterback Tom Brady. Even so, maybe her claim to fame should also be for being filthy rich. She has had a wildly lucrative career as a spokesmodel for various clothing and beauty lines and is also a goodwill ambassador for the United Nations Environment Programme.
Larry David
- Net Worth: $400 Million
Before Larry David starred in the beloved “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” his name was known to hardcore sitcom fans as one of the creators and writers — and real-life inspiration for George Costanza — on “Seinfeld.”
It’s the latter pop-culture phenomenon that accounts for David’s insane wealth — nine years after the show ended, PR Newswire estimated that an unprecedented syndication deal earned the “Seinfeld” alum $3.1 billion. At that time, the same source projected Larry David’s net worth at $900 million.
Two things are certain: Larry David is rich, and wealth hasn’t changed him much. “[Money] gave me something that I didn’t have, but […] it’s not a total transformation. I still, to this day, couldn’t walk up to a woman at a bar and say hello,” he told Charlie Rose in a “60 Minutes” interview. Simply put, David’s net worth isn’t done growing — even if his self-confidence is.
Judge Judy
- Net Worth: $480 Million
Judith Sheindlin’s show, “Judge Judy,” doesn’t need high production values to be a hit — the show hit record highs as it aired for 25 successful seasons, ending in 2021. Sheindlin’s a former judge from New York as well as a smart, shrewd and ruthless negotiator who took home $47 million per year throughout her career on the show, according to Forbes.
Sheindlin described her annual paycheck “negotiations” with CBS bosses, according to a transcript The Hollywood Reporter obtained. She hands them an envelope containing her salary demands and other requests for her crew and production — if CBS doesn’t accept her terms, she walks and produces the show herself.
Victoria Beckham
- Net Worth: $450 Million
Victoria Beckham rose to fame as one of the Spice Girls in the late 1990s. However, if you’re thinking three pop albums almost 20 years ago will net you close to a half-billion dollars, think again.
Posh Spice’s net worth has more to do with her successful career in fashion as she launched her own fashion line in 2008. Her label is still going strong, and so are her finances.
Gloria Estefan
- Net Worth: $500 Million
The rhythm is gonna get you, and, if you’re Gloria Estefan, make you a half-billion dollars in the process. Estefan’s tremendous success as a pop musician in the 1980s gave way to a career in Miami business and real estate, leading to the founding of the multimedia entertainment company Estefan Enterprises.
Even today, she continues to make music like, “Inside Your Heart,” a song created alongside Lin-Manuel Miranda for the movie Vivo, streaming on Netflix.
Kathy Ireland
- Net Worth: $500 Million
A net worth of $500 million is pretty high for someone who arguably wasn’t even the best-known model of the 1980s. But the real story of Kathy Ireland’s success actually started in 1993 when she launched her own line of socks. That led to Kathy Ireland Worldwide, which clocks about $2.6 billion in sales per year.
Dr. Dre
- Net Worth: $500 Million
Dr. Dre, born Andre Romelle Young, might be straight outta Compton, but his talent as an entrepreneur over the years is straight outta Wall Street. Although Dr. Dre’s initial rise to prominence came through his skills as a producer and DJ, it was his foray into designer headphones that made him so rich. Apple purchased Beats Music and Beats Electronics — the latter the maker of the “Beats by Dre” headphones — in 2014 in a $3 billion transaction.
Earvin ‘Magic’ Johnson
- Net Worth: $1.6 billion
From Lansing, Michigan, Magic Johnson was a basketball phenom from a young age, winning state championships in high school and the NCAA championship with Michigan State in 1979. The Lakers made the 19-year-old Johnson the first pick of the 1979 NBA Draft, and he went on to win five championships in 13 seasons in Los Angeles.
The size of his fortune, though, derives primarily from his business acumen. Johnson earned about $40 million playing basketball, but he used that to launch Magic Johnson Enterprises, which is worth an estimated $1 billion today.
Trey Parker and Matt Stone
- Net Worths: $600 Million and $700 Million, respectively
The creative duo behind the show “South Park” — and the voices of the show’s characters Kyle and Cartman — Trey Parker and Matt Stone are worth over $1 billion combined. The ever-relevant humor and media empire of “South Park” is their bread and butter, but Parker and Stone also co-created the Broadway hit “The Book of Mormon,” which has pulled in more than $500 million worldwide.
David Copperfield
- Net Worth: $1 Billion
David Copperfield is the most commercially successful magician in history, but how rich can a magician be? The answer is enormously, insanely, ridiculously rich.
At a shocking estimated net worth of $1 billion, Copperfield is now part of the elusive billionaires’ club. Copperfield earned $46 million in 2020, in part from his gig at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas before the pandemic shutdown, as well as from his ownership of Musha Cay, a group of 11 private Bahamian islands where guests shell out six figures to vacation.
Caitlyn Moorhead, Andrew Lisa and Priscilla Aguilera contributed to the reporting for this article.
Editor’s note: Net worth figures are estimates aggregated from various popular sites, such as Forbes and Celebrity Net Worth.
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