How much is George Clooney worth?
| Net Worth: | $500 Million |
|---|---|
| Profession: | Professional Actor |
| Date of Birth: | May 6, 1961 (age 61) |
| Country: | United States of America |
| Height: | 5 ft 10 in (1.8 m) |
About George Clooney
Fame was in his blood for television star-turned-movie megastar George Clooney. But at first Clooney nursed dreams of becoming a professional baseball player and then following in his fathers footsteps to become a news anchor. George is the son of Nick Clooney and Nina Warren. He was born in Kentucky and grew up mostly in Kentucky and Ohio. He is married to Amal Clooney (Alamuddin), and the father of twins, Ella and Alexander. He is also the nephew of Rosemary Clooney, whom he chauffeured around to glamorous parties.
He attended Northern Kentucky University from 1979 to 1981, majoring in broadcast journalism, and very briefly attended the University of Cincinnati, but did not graduate from either.
Perhaps the best way to describe George’s earlier years, was that he appeared a bit lost. He earned money selling women’s shoes, insurance door-to-door, stocking shelves, working in construction, and cutting tobacco. All the while however he was deeply involved with developing his acting talent. Nevertheless, it wasn’t until approaching his mid-30s that he landed his big break, becoming the object of every woman’s affection, as Dr. Doug Ross on ER.
Clooney co-founded Casamigos Tequila with Rande Gerber and Michael Meldman, in 2013. Just some amigos who wanted to produce a better Tequila, or so the story goes. In 2017, the company was sold to Diageo for $700 million. Clooney also stands to make an additional $300 million if the tequila continues to selling the way that it has been over the next 10 years, according to CNBC.
According to Forbes annual ranking, this made Clooney the world’s highest-paid actor for 2017–2018, earning $239 million. Despite the bulk of his earnings coming from savvy business decisions. It was of course his prowess as an actor that earned him the celebrity and startup capital to later leverage into the tequila brand.
Clooney has made many investments in real estate; villas in Italy, mansions in America, and apartments and vacation homes all over the world. Clooney co-founded his famous billion dollar company Casamigos, at a compound in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico owned by himself, Amal and Rande Gerber and Cindy Crawford. The compound the two couples called, Casamigos, and the tequila brand was named after that.
His biggest windfall came about due to his dissatisfaction with available Tequila, this frustration turned into a catalyst and some serious cash. George and his friend Randy Gerber started experimenting with their own tequila recipes, making a batch and taste testing until they found the one they liked. They named their prized recipe Casamigos after the vacation compound in Mexico where they did their “research”.
At first they only shared with friends, but in 2013 Casamigos went into commercial production, and became wildly popular. Four years later the friends sold the company for nearly a billion dollars! When talking about how he no longer needed to act to, “pay the rent”, he said, “I sold a tequila company for a billion f***ing dollars. I don’t need money” .
While he doesn’t invest in is the stock market, “I didn’t put money in the stock market. To me that’s like Vegas without the dancing girls – none of the fun, no gambling or dancing or drinking – and you don’t get to participate. So I paid off my house in cash when I could. It’s about having a foundation for when things go bad.”
This seems like a plan that has paid off, he earned the title of “Highest paid actor of 2018”, despite not having made a movie since 2016. He most recently starred as Augustine in The Midnight Sky in 2020.
Clooney has also reportedly earned more than $30 million by advertising Nespresso coffee. However when it comes to putting his face on something or associating a product or service with his personal brand, he checks with his wife. After all, why not, she specializes in international law. And so when a commercial airline from a country that has “been questionable at times” offered George $35 million for one day’s work in a commercial, he said “you know it’s not worth it’.” Clooney considers that he has enough money to “lose sleep over it”.
Clooney’s Real Estate
“I like owning dirt. You know,” George Clooney has said. “I spent a lot of time broke when I moved to California. So deep in my soul is still this idea of being unemployed. To me, owning land means you could sell it at some point and always have money.”
George and Amal Clooney own real estate all over the world including a luxury New York apartment in Aby Rosen’s new Norman Foster-designed building, which they purchased after they were officially married. As well as a 17th-century mansion on a 4-acre island in the middle of River Thames in London, UK. The Clooneys bought the property for £10 million in 2014.
Clooney has also owned a $13 million villa in the Italian town of Laglio, since 2002. In June 2009, Clooney hosted the Obamas.
The Clooneys also previously owned a property in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. It sat adjacent to Rande Gerber and Cindy Crawford’s home who are also close friends. The properties and the dwellers were so close that it all became a kind of single compound and the friends would often have dinner together and so on. “It felt like one compound. We’d have a bunch of our friends there — breakfast at our place, lunch at his, dinner at ours.”
Eventually the two properties together came to be called the “Casamigos” or the House of Friends. It was at this very location that Clooney founded the tequila company with Rande Gerber and Michael Meldman; it was named after the very place, Casamigos. In 2016, together they sold the two properties for a reported $100 million and the tequila company a year later, for $1 billion.
Despite the sale of Casamigos, the Clooneys still have a property close to Gerber and Crawford. Both couples maintain a high-floor apartment in a luxury complex in Midtown Manhattan. It is the aforementioned Norman Foster-designed building. The apartment is estimated to be worth around $22 million. The building’s penthouse has been listed with a price tag of $65 million.
In 1995, Clooney purchased a Studio City, Los Angeles property in 1995 from Stevie Nicks.
When asked about his success, George said that before finding fame at 34, “…I’d failed a lot and having failed a lot I understood how lucky success was because it’s not just about your brilliance”.
He went on to say that, “I think the reason why a lot of young people are such screw ups, is oftentimes they didn’t have the luxury I had of forming important relationships and opinions and life experiences before having success.”
George has made plenty of money in the movie industry, and used that money to make more money. George has been a force for change for various humanitarian needs around the world, using his own time and money to create positive change. He doesn’t always appreciate the spotlight, but uses it to bring awareness to issues he feels strongly about and was named a U.N. “Messenger of Peace”.
Closer to home he makes an effort to stay close to friends and family, even giving out suitcases with $1,000,000.00 to each of his fourteen closest friends, to thank them for being there for him when he was just starting out.
George Clooney has received a British Academy Film Award, two Academy Awards, four Golden Globes, and many nominations, not only for acting but also for directing and producing. Clooney first became well known for his role as Dr. Doug Ross in the medical drama ER from 1994 to 1999 (having played a different Dr. Doug Ross a decade earlier in a sitcom E/R.)
While his acting career has not always been exemplary (Batman and Robin), he has always looked good. He even managed to make a disheveled mullet look good in his roles in The Facts of Life and Roseanne.
“They say I was a bad Batman, that it was my fault, that I buried the franchise. But the truth is, it was a big project. I was pretty intimidated in that world. I did the best I could in the situation I was given,” Clooney has said of his role that has been described as “the worst Batman portrayal”. His roles in movies like From Dusk til Dawn, One Fine Day, Out of Sight, The Thin Red Line, The Perfect Storm, Three Kings, O Brother Where Art Thou, the Ocean’s franchise, among others, have ensured that this however, has rubbed off.
Summing-Up
George Clooney spent longer struggling for a foothold in an acting career than most but started how he meant to go on. Having gotten very rich through the sale of his Tequila company, he has been thoughtful not only in preserving his fortune, but also in using it to help others. He has worked hard to maintain relationships with family and friends and is well known for being a “good guy”. He makes an effort to keep himself humble, “I watch Batman & Robin from time to time. It’s the worst movie I ever made, so it’s a good lesson in humility,” he has said.
In talking about Rosemary Clooney, and the struggles and pressure of fame and success, Clooney stated, “Handling success well is a trick”, and that he learned a lot about handling success through his Aunt Rosemary, “I’ve got a great advantage because (she) was very successful at a young age in the 50s, and she didn’t handle it well”. He went on to say, “I got a really good lesson in the idea that all of this is fleeting… I know what the journey is…”, he realized through her that success can be fleeting, and that you need to enjoy it while you have it.
George Clooney has succeeded, he has money, loyal friends, a fabulous career (with no end in sight), several beautiful homes, a lovely wife and healthy children. George Clooney is a success in many ways, not only in terms of money, but also at being a good person.
