In Keanu Reeves’ Wikipedia entry, it states that he lived in hotels for ten years, even though he was making millions. It seems he simply had no interest in lavish homes, etc…
Are there any other celebrities know for their minimalist lifestyles?
That bald chick. You know, Dolly Lama. Too ugly to hit the club scene, I figure.
Paul and Linda McCartney owned mansions in London and LA, but their favorite home was a Scottish farm where sheep were allowed in the house. His assistants and bandmates allegedly hated the place because even on their 1% of 1% fraction of McCartney’s wealth they all lived much better at home.
Sam Walton (if you can count him as a celebrity) was the richest man in America but drove a beat up old truck and lived in a modest house. One of the Hunt billionaires from Texas lived in a 3 BR house in a middle class neighborhood.
Butterfly McQueen (Prissy from GWTW), while not vastly rich, was very well-to-do from investments yet lived in a 3 room shotgun house in Augusta, Georgia. She died when her dress caught fire from its space heater, and on the day she died she had written $40,000 (more than the value of the house) in checks to various charities.
I don’t think you can beat Warren Buffet. He may not count as a celebrity, but he’s insanely rich, yet lives frugally.
True that. I read that he lives in the same upper middle-class home he bought in the 1950s, yet just gave away 40 Billion dollars.
Dorothy Parker had money, but she lived mostly in hotels and small apartments. She once remarked “I just need a place where I can lay my hat and a few friends.”
According to wikipedia, both are true. Though it’s only 30 Billion.
Part of Osama Bin Ladin’s popularity comes from his living a life of simplicity instead of playboying it up as lots of young men with hundreds of millions of dollars are wont to do.
Bill Gates has an enormous house, but he doesn’t seem to live very extravagantly - at least not by Paul Allen or Larry Ellison standards.
Cary Grant was notoriously stingy in the Milburn Drysdale fashion, meaning that he lived in a mansion but was almost neurotically cheap in other ways. He ate TV dinners, marked liquor bottles to make sure housekeepers weren’t stealing, framed expensive paintings in cheap and homemade frames, etc… He also removed company insignia from Cadillacs and other luxury items because, he argued, they should pay him for the endorsement so he wasn’t going to advertise for free. Jack Benny was similar.
Moe Howard from The Three Stooges was famously thrifty. He was far wealthier than the other Stooges due to his real estate investments (Larry famously lived lavishly and spent himself into near penury while Curly got divorced a lot and then had a stroke), but when his film career dried [before its revival] up he took jobs as a messenger and senior citizen errand-boy to keep money coming in. His home was nice but not a mansion; his main luxury was sports cars. Pics of Moe at home
Florence Henderson, who grew up in poverty on a tobacco farm, is famously tight with a dollar. On one talk show she admitted that she not only furnished her house by going straight to the factory in (somewhere in Asia) but that she arranged a couple of performances while there so that somebody else would pay for the trip. When her children grew up and left home she sold the house and bought a houseboat. (Unlike the kids, the 3 adults on BRADY BUNCH did receive residuals.)
Speaking of Brady Bunch, Ann B. Davis lived next door to a friend of mine who grew up in Pittsburgh. She lived with a minister and his family in a nice but middle class neighborhood, but by choice and not necessity. Like Moe, her extravagance was cars- she had a gold Miata and a Porsche.
Mia Farrow lived with all her children in an NYC rent controlled apartment that had originally been her mother’s. It was a nice apartment, but hardly luxious. She only gave it up after the rent laws changed and the rent tripled. She moved to a Connecticut farmhouse, nice but hardly a mansion.
[hijack]Of course, if I had the money I’d probably live in a hotel suite. Maid-service, usually good locations, all utilities and maintenance included, etc… There’s a big trend in Florida and other resort areas now with hotels going condo. My sister owns a property on the beach in AL that is essentially one. It’s privately owned and she furnished/decorated it herself, but it can be rented like a hotel including, when it’s available, by walk-in guests; there’s a front desk and my sister sends them communication that “I’ll be staying there from the 4th to the 9th, any other time it can be rented”. The office provides maid service, room service, etc…
Tennessee Williams kept two hotel suites permanently rented, one in NYC and one in New Orleans. The only houses he owned were vacation homes.
Jacqueline Susann made millions from her books, yet she and her husband lived in a hotel and lived a simple lifestyle.
That’s surprising. She would seem to be the “If you got it flaunt it” type.
I’ve never seen his house in Atlanta, but Jimmy Carter’s house in Plains, Georgia is the same home he lived in as a struggling peanut farmer before being elected governor. He’s added onto it to accomodate growing family and there’s a Secret Service building, but it’s no mansion by any means and probably the only house of an ex-president located on a road that includes a trailer park and a subsidized housing complex for senior citizens.
Doesn’t Matthew McConaughey live in a trailer or something?
He has an RV that he occasionally parks on beaches for a few days ala Jim Rockford. He shares a house with Lance Armstrong and sometimes Jake Gyllenhaal in LA and owns his “main house” in Austin, Texas. (I’m irritated that I know this.)
That depends on the hotel room. It could just as easily mean that he liked having 24 hour room service, maids, etc. without wanting to go through the hastle of hiring and managing people himself, while living in a three bedroom penthouse that cost $1000 a night.
I agree with this nitpick. Keanu and other celebs living in hotels (common with Athletes who might get traded a lot) isn’t really modest at all. In many ways it’s practical, I assume Keanu was filming on location constantly and probably spent almost no time at “home”, but it’s not a humble living. Likely paying well over a thousand dollars a day for a suite in a hotel in a major city like LA, NYC, Miami or Chicago to be catered to hand and foot doesn’t really ooze restraint. Certainly there are much more ostentatious ways to live, and if they are living in a Doubletree Suites or something it could be pretty modest, but having worked for a major hotel chain I can tell you that rich folks spend several hundred thousand dollars a year to maintain full-time hotel rooms.
I don’t know what kind of house she lives in, but future Mrs. Mangrove Mandy Moore has fairly modest demands on accommodations while on tour.
Sampiro:
That Moe Howard site is the sweetest thing I’ve read in a long time - thanks for the link!
VCNJ~