Everyone knows that Hollywood is all about the glamour, and there's certainly a heck
of a lot of money out there for the actors who make it.
Some stars, however, have a lot less money than you might expect.
Here are the actors who are poorer than you thought.
The time when Lindsay Lohan was Hollywood's hottest young star may seem like the distant
past, and it's hard to imagine there was a time when she was raking in the cash, but
she was.
In the early 2000s, Lohan was getting paid up to $7.5 million per film for some of her
bigger movies, so it's not too surprising that the website SheKnows reports that, as
of 2004, the then-18-year old had a net worth of more than $30 million.
What is surprising is that in 2020, Celebrity Net Worth estimated her fortune at just $800,000.
Of course, if you've been paying attention, it'll be pretty obvious where Lohan's money
went.
As Business Insider reported back in 2010, the actress had been to rehab three times
by the age of 23, and found it difficult to get acting work because she was impossible
to insure as a result of her drug problems.
Add to that the declining paychecks for the work she could get, and you have a recipe
for financial disaster on an epic scale.
Gary Busey has had a phenomenally successful career.
While never quite achieving superstar status, over the course of five decades he's compiled
nearly 200 acting roles, and has rarely gone more than a year without a job.
Some of those credits were in some pretty successful films too, such as Under Siege
and Point Break.
And yet, according to Celebrity Net Worth, Busey is worth just $500,000.
So what happened?
As with most people's stories, Busey's is complicated.
He was once regarded as a major leading man and was even nominated for an Oscar for his
work in The Buddy Holly Story in 1978.
But in 1988, he suffered a horrific motorcycle accident that resulted in multiple brain injuries,
which changed his behavior in ways, and had a long-lasting impact on his career.
"'Cause I'd seen things I'd seen before, but it was like it was the first time I was seeing
them."
Busey's actor son, Jake, says his father's inability to censor his thoughts has made
it harder for both of them.
In a 2019 interview with Hollywood Reporter, he explained:
"The same Busey name that helped me 30 years ago has become a scorpion's tail because it's
associated with insanity."
Busey's injury also exacerbated an existing drug habit, and the combination of no impulse
control, drugs, and a lack of high-paying jobs led to a 2012 bankruptcy filing, in which
he listed just $50,000 in assets.
Nicolas Cage's slide into the video-on-demand category of film has been one of the more
surprising career transformations of the modern age.
Cage was once considered an A-list talent, and an actor who could both do serious work
and play a believable action star.
His net worth of $25 million is a lot of money, but considering the fact that Cage was once
allegedly worth as much as $150 million and at one point earned as much as $20 million
per film, that number seems awfully low.
Things make a lot more sense once you take into account Cage's unique shopping habits,
however.
Over the years, the actor has purchased no fewer than 15 homes, a number of other properties,
and a range of collectibles, such as a rare Superman comic book and a real dinosaur skull.
Spending like that will erode any fortune, and when Cage came up short on the absolutely
massive property tax bills, the foreclosures began, and he had to scramble to stay solvent.
While he's become a bit of a joke for the slew of low-budget, sketchy films he's appeared
in over the last decade, that hustle is exactly why he's successfully rebuilt at least a portion
of his former fortune.
As part of Long Island's Baldwin family of actors, Stephen Baldwin has appeared in some
big movies, and a whole load of not-so-big movies.
Still, he's worked as a well-known actor for decades, so you might imagine he'd be worth
a bit more than the $500,000 that Celebrity Net Worth estimates.
But the truth is that Baldwin got into a heap of tax and credit card trouble a few years
ago.
After falling behind on his mortgage payments on his million-dollar Long Island home, Baldwin
tried to sell up, and wound up defaulting on the $781,000 loan instead.
At the same time, the IRS came after him for not paying taxes for a couple of years, slapping
a $407,000 lien on the actor.
Baldwin has spent the last few years cleaning up his finances.
The house was auctioned off, and Baldwin and his wife moved into a small apartment in Queens
to reduce expenses.
Baldwin got the lien lifted a few years ago, but all that drama has had a negative effect
on his net worth.
All the same, the actor has four projects listed on IMDB this year, so he might just
be on his way back to the big time.
$10 million would mean early retirement for most people, but it doesn't seem like a lot
of money for someone like Wesley Snipes, who was once paid $13 million for Blade: Trinity
alone.
So what happened?
In a nutshell, Snipes is one of the many extremely wealthy people who thought he could get away
with not paying his taxes.
Snipes was indicted in 2006 on tax fraud in the form of $12 million in refunds he illegally
claimed, not to mention failing to file tax returns for several years.
His legal team claimed he was the victim of terrible advice, but failed to mount any sort
of defense when the case went to trial, while the IRS proved he'd earned about $40 million
between 1999 and 2004.
Snipes wound up in jail on tax evasion charges, but just because you go to jail doesn't mean
you stop owing the IRS, so Snipes still had to repay his back taxes when he got out in
2013.
After a few more years in court, he managed to get his debt reduced from $23 million to
$9.5 million, but that's still gotta hurt your bottom line, especially when you're not
the A-Lister you once were.
A net worth of $5 million certainly isn't nothing to sniff at, but considering that
Chris Tucker was once once one of the highest-paid actors in Hollywood, it's a surprisingly low
number, even when you take into account his apparent lack of interest in working.
Since his break into megastardom with 1998's Rush Hour, Tucker has only appeared in four
films: Rush Hour 2, Rush Hour 3, Silver Linings Playbook, and Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk.
Still, considering he was paid $25 million for Rush Hour 3 alone, you've gotta ask, what
happened to all that money?
Well, for one, a number of tax problems, poor accounting, and business management difficulties
resulted in a whopping $14 million fine from the IRS.
"Take care of your business, man, don't listen to people, do your own business, be careful
who you listen to.
'Cause that's the last time I let Wesley Snipes help me out with my taxes."
Those problems sparked a domino effect: Yahoo! reports that Tucker subsequently had a $6
million home foreclosed on.
Having your money mismanaged by so-called professionals can happen to anybody, however,
and Tucker's fortunes may be on the upswing again if the rumors about a fourth Rush Hour
film turn out to be true.
Of course, whether he can match that $25 million payday remains to be seen.
Often, stars and celebrities' financial troubles can come as a result of their own overspending
or bad financial decisions.
But Kelly Rutherford's story is different.
The reason the star of Gossip Girl to be only worth $1 million today is a devastating divorce
and a bitter custody battle.
Divorce is pretty much the main destroyer of wealth in the modern age, and Rutherford's
was particularly nasty.
In addition to legal fees to her attorneys, Page Six reported that Rutherford had to spend
enormous amounts of money flying back and forth to Monaco just to see her children after
her estranged husband moved them there, making 70 trips in just two years.
This also impaired her ability to work, since she was traveling all the time.
The exorbitant costs of these divorce and custody battles, plus the lack of work, forced
Rutherford to declare bankruptcy in 2013.
With that in mind, it's actually kind of impressive that she's clawed her way back to millionaire
status.
Depending on your age, you may or may not remember Sinbad, but the comedian was once
a pretty big deal.
He had his own TV show at one point and starred in plenty of movies, while maintaining a solid
stand-up comedy career, all of which should have left him an incredibly wealthy man.
However, Celebrity Net Worth estimates he's worth about $4 million, which is actually
a surprisingly low number.
Sinbad has been pretty honest about what happened to his money.
In a 2013 interview with Huffpost Live, he admitted that he had tried to keep his business
interests afloat with his own money, assuming he'd get a big movie role to cover the losses.
"I kept thinking 'okay, I get one more movie, and I wipe these bills out'.
But that movie didn't come."
As he struggled to pay salaries and equipment fees, he fell behind on his taxes and eventually
had to declare bankruptcy...twice.
A series of medical crises followed, including spinal fusion surgery in 2015, which further
slowed his ability to work while putting pressure on his finances.
Luckily, Sinbad has done some sporadic television work in recent years, including a regular
role on the now-canceled FOX series Rel, which has allowed him to claw back at least a little
of his former fortune.
You probably know Teri Polo best from the Meet the Parents films, which, together, grossed
over $1 billion worldwide.
A former model, Polo has appeared in over a hundred other movies and TV shows in a career
lasting nearly four decades.
Yet she fell into enormous debt and filed for bankruptcy in 2014, and today, Celebrity
Net Worth her net worth to be negative $800,000, meaning her debts far exceed her assets.
When she filed for bankruptcy, Polo claimed to have less than $50,000 to her name, with
debts of about $1 million, which were mostly tied up in back taxes.
She was also being sued by her landlord when she stopped paying rent with almost a year
to go on her lease, allegedly leaving her apartment in a disgusting and disastrous state,
which added to her legal and financial woes.
Polo continues to work, but for now, it looks like most of her salaries are going toward
paying off that tax debt.
Norm MacDonald is widely considered to be a legend in the world of stand-up comedy.
For nearly 30 years, he's been one of the most recognizable names in the business, appearing
in countless TV shows and films as well as doing comedy specials and voice work, all
while touring with his stand-up act.
In fact, according to IGN, MacDonald was one of television's highest-paid performers as
recently as 2018.
So how come Macdonald's fortune is estimated to sit at just $1.5 million?
There's a one-word answer for this: Gambling.
MacDonald is famous for his love of gambling, and as Marc Maron [MARE-in] recounts in his
book Waiting for the Punch, the actor once said point-blank:
"I went broke a few times when I actually had lots of money.
With gambling.
And I mean broke.
Dead broke."
In fact, Forbes reports that MacDonald was once so desperate to stop gambling that he
actually threw away $60,000.
No wonder his fortune has taken such a hit.
Best-known for his roles in National Lampoon's Vacation and Independence Day, Randy Quaid
was once one of the hardest-working actors in Hollywood.
Between 1971 and 2009, he appeared in nearly 120 films and television shows.
Along the way, he picked up some pretty hefty paydays too, including $1 million for National
Lampoon's Christmas Vacation and $2.25 million for Kingpin.
Nevertheless, today, Quaid's fortune is estimated at negative $1 million, largely due to a series
of bizarre decisions made by Quaid and his wife, Evi.
The Quaids claim they have been targeted by a shadowy organization they call "The Hollywood
Star Whackers," a group they say has killed many celebrities.
Along the way, they've skipped out on huge bills, squatted in properties they didn't
own, and tried to live in Canada illegally.
While the Quaids have been relatively quiet for a few years, and are now living back living
in Los Angeles, it's been a rough ride, and one which has apparently cost Quaid all of
his money.
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