How much is Will Ferrell worth?
| Net Worth: | $175 Million |
|---|---|
| Profession: | Professional Actor |
| Date of Birth: | July 16, 1967 |
| Country: | United States of America |
| Height: | 1.91 m |
Will Ferrell was one of the most well-liked and lucrative comedy stars of the 2000s. His experience with improvisation at The Groundlings helped him achieve great success on Saturday Night Live, where he rose to become one of the show’s biggest performers ever. He first gained fame on Saturday Night Live for his lifelike portrayal of George W. Bush before dominating the silver screen in Zoolander, Old School, and Wedding Crashers. Ferrell is undoubtedly one of the most well-known comedians of the last 20 years, with a tremendous film career and multiple lucrative side projects (such as the website Funny or Die).
Will Ferrell’s rise from local comedy troupe funnyman to box office star, from sportscaster to comedic genius, is unquestionably no joke.
Will Ferrell was born in front of the nation’s eyes on Saturday Night Live and quickly rose to the status of one of Hollywood’s highest paid performers after becoming the audience’s all-time favorite cast member. He is most renowned for bringing enduring characters to life, like Brennan Huff of Step Brothers, Ron Burgundy, Buddy the Elf, and Ricky Bobby. Despite having been in the business for more than 20 years, Will Ferrell continues to be one of the most bankable comedic actors, outlasting many of his contemporaries.
The class clown, not
The Righteous Brothers keyboardist Lee Ferrell and instructor Kay Ferrell welcomed John William Ferrell into the world in Irvine, California. But in contrast to the way that young Will was, Irvine was the epitome of a business suburb—a homogenous, precisely planned cul-de-sac of Republicanism. Later, Ferrell referred to his hometown as: “humor broke the boredom. And there was a lot to make fun of.”
Ferrell’s childhood was mostly cheerful, despite the fact that his parents separated when he was eight years old. He excelled academically, played baseball and soccer in high school, and claims that, in contrast to popular belief, he was not a full-fledged class clown. Not that he wasn’t funny—he and a friend performed comedy skits on the school PA to promote the sale of senior class T-shirts, and they were so successful that the principal requested Ferrell to deliver all the announcements. It was Ferrell’s first of many lengthy and incredibly successful careers creating comedic personas.
Surprise Career
Ferrell pursued a highly specialized specialization in sports information at USC after graduating from high school in order to become a sports broadcaster. He would continue to find venues for his humor, but it wasn’t until after graduation—while making jokes in front of a camera at an NBC Sports internship—that Ferrell realized what he really wanted to do for a living: laughing, not sports.
Within a year, he had abandoned his plans to become a sportscaster and joined the renowned Los Angeles theater group The Groundlings. For years, Ferrell leveraged the success of his Groundlings role to hone his prodigious talent and comprehend his own genius. In a later interview, he stated, “What I realized when I started doing comedy is that while I may not be the wittiest or the fastest on my feet, the one thing I can promise is that I won’t hold anything back. Ferrell’s comedy is characterized by his lack of restraint, and his natural talent helped him land a position as one of the group’s star performers.
Life To Live
A person with Ferrell’s skill doesn’t stay in their hometown for very long, and in 1995, he was given the opportunity to audition for Lorne Michaels, who had gone to Los Angeles in search of new talent for the struggling Saturday Night Live. Ferrell gave him the impression of a crazed suburban father and Harry Carey. The following season of Saturday Night Live included both personas, who helped make Will the show’s star for the following six seasons. According to Michaels, “Will is the glue that holds the show together,” in 1998’s People magazine.
In 2000, when he was considering leaving the show, they offered him a record-breaking $350,000 salary to persuade him to stay. Ferrell, though, decided that he’d had enough of New York and moved to Los Angeles in 2002 to start a film career.
Many former SNL cast members have hopes of making it in Hollywood, but Ferrell was in high demand after the success of his funny co-starring debut in Old School. Even hotter after earning close to $200 million at the box office and carrying Elf by himself (with a level of compassion combined with his trademark goofiness).
Magnus, Mattias, and Axel, the couple’s three kids, were born throughout the course of the following ten years while they divided their time between New York City and Orange County, California. Ferrell wed Swedish actress Viveca Paulin in 2000.
He has consistently produced blockbuster movies, including a pleasantly surprising emotional performance in the creative Stranger Than Fiction. His overall bankability more than justifies his seven-figure salary, even though not all of his films have been successes.
Ferrell has dedicated himself to everything humorous off-screen. His website, FunnyOrDie.com, has established itself as a cornerstone of Internet humor, and his numerous cameo appearances never fail to make people laugh—just like his limited engagement Broadway production of You’re Welcome America: A Final Night with George W. Bush did. Whether he was the class clown or not, his work shows he is a genuine comedian.
Why is he so famous?
In 1994, ratings for Saturday Night Live were dipping. Upon seeing The Groundlings, a comedy group that included Will Ferrell, a producer for SNL had Ferrell audition for the show and after that, the improv genius became a major cast member for a full seven years. The actor even went on to release the underrated feature length movie A Night At The Roxbury, based on characters he created on SNL. Since his departure, Ferrell has guest hosted the show five times, making him a member of the exclusive SNL five timers club. In 2014, the actor was even voted the best SNL cast member of all time.
Though Ferrell had huge roles in movies such as The Suburbans, Zoolander alongside Ben Stiller, and Old School throughout his tenure on Saturday Night Live, none of them were particular huge record breaking blockbusters.
But it was in 2003 when his profile as a movie star sky rocketed as he starred in the beloved Christmas movie, Elf. It has been long enough since the movie’s release that it’s now safe to call the movie a Christmas classic. However, the role was written for Jim Carrey, and we may not have the Will Ferrell we know in our lives today if it wasn’t for Jim Carrey turning down the role. Strangely enough, the movie opened at number two in the U.S., behind The Matrix Revolutions, but then rose to number one in its second week, which almost never happens, and was clearly a result of word of mouth.
The following year, Ferrell returned bigger than ever, playing the now iconic titular character in Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, which was an experiment in improvisation that paid off massively at the box office and turned the whole cast in to stars over night, especially Will Ferrell. Since then, the actor has gone on to star in literally dozens of movies and the past 16 years and has made audiences laugh in movies such as Semi-Pro, Megamind, and The Other Guys, to name a few.
When did Will Ferrell make it?
Will Ferrell is a box office magnate. Starting in 2003, his movies gross hundreds of millions of dollars at a time and it’s prominently thanks to Ferrell’s presence. The stretch began with 2003’s Elf, which had a mid sized budget of £33 million and went on to gross over $220 million worldwide, a number that even the producers must have been shocked by. The actor made $7 million for Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, and after the huge success of that movie, Ferrell would rarely take a lead role for less than $20 million, taking home the massive figure for Kicking and Screaming, Bewitched, Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, Semi Pro, and Land of the Lost.
Thanks to these movies, Ferrell made $100 million in just four years, and that doesn’t include the salaries he earned for Blades of Glory and Step Brothers, which were released in the same time-span.
Many of Ferrell’s movies have gone on to spawn sequels, making him an important part in a ton of franchises.
Though Zoolander didn’t make hundreds of millions upon release and was more of a modest box office success, it made gastronomical numbers in DVD sales year after year, and so a sequel was green lit. He also starred in The Lego Movie and The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part, with the first movie making close to half a billion dollars.
As Ferrell is essentially the producer for all of the movies he now stars in, not only will he receive a salary for acting, but he will also see a percentage of profits from the back end. Some of the most successful movies he has produced are The Other Guys, bringing in $170 million, Get Hard with $111 million, and Daddy’s Home and Daddy’s Home 2, which made $220 million and $180 million respectively.
Ferrell is also the co-founder, along with his writing partner Adam McKay, of Funny or Die, a video streaming platform responsible for creating Drunk History and the Emmy Award winning Between Two Thrones. Though it is unclear exactly how much the platform is worth, it is likely to be worth tens of millions of dollars.
How successful is he?
After his years on SNL impersonating famous personalities such as George W. Bush, James Lipton, and Alex Trebek, Ferrell went on to use his skills to create an outlandish set of characters that has made the world fall in love with him. Magnatu in Zoolander, Ron Burgundy in Anchorman, and Ricky Bobby in Talladega Nights among others are all outlandish characters with strange quirks that few other actors could bring to the roles.
His characters come under two categories, the first being Characters that are a product of their times, often mocking American culture. The other category is one more absurd, where he embraces costume design, strange accents, and truly surreal comedy, such as in Zoolander, Blades of Glory, and A Night At The Roxbury.
Will Ferrell is a master of improvisation. Though he has had years of practice thanks his comedy group The Groundlings and spending seven years in the extremely competitive environment of Saturday Night Live, improvisation has become an essential part of most of the actor’s movies. Ferrell clearly enjoys improvising just as much as people enjoy watching it, and that energy spills out on to the screen. He is known to improvise so much on set and not stopping until the whole cast and crew are holding their stomachs with stitches from laughing too much. It’s almost as if the comedian doesn’t care about how the movie turns out and he’s just having fun.
Summary
Over decades of honing his skills on various platforms, whether it’s in movies, TV, or even on the internet in a Funny Or Die sketch, Will Ferrell has become the king of improvisation. Thanks to his now iconic character, Will Ferrell now has an estimated net worth of $175 million. You can see Ferrell flexing his improv skills in the newly released Netflix original, Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga, where he stars alongside Rachel McAdams.
