For the purpose of this thread we’ll just include TV, Music, and Movies. I don’t really care about sports
Will Smith’s combined salary from imdb shows him at over $143m, not to mention his TV show, his music, and 10% of a few high grossing movies.
I believe Oprah is worth over a billion (or at least at one time she was?) but I imagine alot of that is from her magazine, which would disqualify her.
Jay-Z claims (in a song) to be worth “over 100 million”
I think I’ve read that Schwarzenegger and Bill Cosby are both worth over a billion (someone correct me?)
I’m sure Paul and Ringo must be worth quite a bit but no idea how much.
The guys from Aerosmith, for no other reason than amazing longevity must be worth a ton.
The guys from Pink Floyd probably aren’t hurting either.
I think it’s because they had astute accountants and business managers who got them into a position of owning the store, not just working for the owner. If you’re able to get gross points on a series of blockbusters and you have career longevity, you can make money long after the project has been released domestically(overseas release, video and dvd release, etc.). This is a very general answer which leaves out a lot of details.
Bowie was quite close to bankruptcy before he became the first rock star to issue bonds in his own name, which netted him around $45 million.
Paul McCartney could buy and sell David Bowie at least 30 times over.
McCartney is the world’s most wealthy rock star with total holdings of around $950,000,000,000-$1,000,000,000,000.
He is far and away the wealthiest rock star. Hell, he got OVER $100,000,000 in royalties just from the CD release of the Anthology series.
He has invested wisely but he would be much richer if he had the rights to the Beatles catalog, unfortunately Michael Jackson now has those. If McCartney had the rights it has been estimated that his net worth would be in the area of $2,000,000,000, which is just enough to get by.
I remember reading once, about 15 years ago, that Cheech Marin was one of the wealthiest actors. His movies made lots, cost little, and he made sure he got a share of all the royalties, etc. He also invested wisely.
And so, which of these wealthy entertainers makes the best philanthropic use of their money? Is Paul the only one to have done something on the scale of underwriting an arts college?
For the sake of discussion, let’s not count just “giving it away to charity”. That doesn’t have as much class and originality.