Celebrities from well-off families

Taylor Swift's dad was a stockbroker and Merrill Lynch.

Ariana Grande's father owned a major design company and her mother was a CEO at another.

Logan Lerman's family has manufactured prosthetics for decades.

And of course there's Brooke Shields, Olivia Wilde and Kyra Sedgwick - all from rich families.

Richard E. Grant

Dana Delaney

Sigourney Weaver

All of them, Katie

Edward Norton. Father an environmental lawyer and

[QUOTE]Norton's maternal grandfather, James Rouse, was the founder of The Rouse Company and co-founder of the real estate corporation Enterprise Community Partners.[7]

Salma Hayek's father is/was an executive and company owner, mother an opera singer.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus

R6 beat me to it.

Ted Danson I think.

Chevy Chase. Link is to his family’s summer home.

Probably a lot of celebrities. It's a lot easier to pursue 'the arts' when you don't have to worry about living costs.

James Wolk

Gilda Radner

Amanda Bynes' father is a dentist.

Eve Plumb's dad was an RCA producer and produced some famous albums.

One of Lisa Kudrow's parents is a doctor.

Jonathan Jackson's (Lucky, GH) father is a doctor.

Ben Platt

[quote] His maternal grandfather was Harry Kelly, a former Governor of Michigan.[2] His uncle, Brian Kelly, was an actor featured in the series Flipper and a producer of the movie Blade Runner.

Dina Merrill

Glenn Close.

What’s a wig attorney OP?

Patrick Schwarzenegger

Dina Merrill was well, well-off

Carly Simon (Simon and Schuster)

Anne Baxter

Gene Tierney

Barbara Bel Geddes

yeah, no other actor's wealth would even come close to Dina Merrill's family. Everything Dina was my obsession a few years ago.

Ellie Kemper- member of the one of the Kemper banking families in Missouri

Not to hijack the thread but when your obsession comes up in conversation....But Dina's mother was Marjorie Merriweather Post and her father was E.F Hutton. Dina was worth 5 billion at the time of her death.

Courtney Love. I don't believe her dad came from money, but her mother (the biological daughter of writer Paula Fox) was adopted at birth by a wealthy Italian-American San Francisco family and inherited a big chunk of change when Courtney was a child. Her mother was, from my understanding, a very self-involved rich hippie who emotionally neglected her firstborn, which I think, paired with some genetic predispositions (Courtney's dad was an established whacko), resulted in the hot mess we all know today. Courtney chose the gutter life of her own accord, with the help of a trust fund that she ran through after getting emancipated and globetrotting while stripping on the side.

This is a slight shift in time, but Alfred Shaugnessy's uncle was equerry to the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII (?). He was described as the first boyfriend to the girl who later became QEII.

R22 didn't Dina's family build or own Mar-A-Lago in times past?

I don’t think there has been a born poor movie star in the last 40 years.

To add to r23's post - Courtney Love's mother, Linda Harrison, was a psychotherapist and the character of Margaret Chenowith in Six Feet Under (who was a batshit crazy psychotherapist and former 60s hippie, brilliantly played by Joanna Cassidy) was based on her.

Dina grew up in Mar-A-Lago. Well there and a multitude of other places but she would call MAL home. She gave it to the US government to use as they saw fit. The government said it was too expensive to maintain for any purpose they might have for it. So Trump bought it. One of her houses, when she was little, was a summer house in upstate NY. They actually built a house above a lake, I guess it kind of straddled the lake so that they could park their boats underneath and go right into the house without worrying about a boat launch. They also had a great mansion in D.C. that her mother loved living in once she started her philanthropic en-devours. They also gave that to the government which still uses it as a State Department building. I believe it was probably the most expensive private home that ever existed in D.C.

Thanks R28.

Lady Fugface

Paul Giamatti‘s father was president of Yale University and later on the commissioner of Major League Baseball.

Nick Kroll‘s dad Jules Kroll is a billionaire businessman.

Actually the Post Mansion in D.C. is the Hillwood Estate. It was given to the Smithsonain to use as an art museum. Along with a ten million dollar endowment. The Smithsonian couldn't keep it up. Again to expensive. So, in 1976, it reverted back to the Post Foundation and is now a great art museum. It has one of the greatest collections in the world. All the pieces of course once belonged to Post/Merrill.

Robin Williams

Rooney and Kate Mara's grandparents were the founders of the New York Giants and Pittsburgh Steelers.

You bitches are slipping.

Most of them. A more concise list would be those who didn’t come from well off families.

Julia Louis Dreyfuss owns this thread although Balthazar Getty might come a close second.

Humphrey Bogart

Fred Willard, his mother was heiress to the Weinman fur fortune.

Sharon Osbourne

R27 I had no idea she was based on her, but in hindsight it makes sense.

Lady Gaga claimed to have come from a lower class family and used to strip dance to make ends meet. But she grew up in the Upper West Side, and went to the private Convent of the Sacred Heart in Manhattan, Tisch School of the Arts, and the Lee Strasberg Theater and Film Institute. I wish I had such a lower class upbringing!

It's eating me up no one mentioned me.

Ahem. Did you forget about me? Sad!

Elizabeth Woolridge "Lana Del Rey" Grant

R26 Jessica Chastain

Not a movie star but wasn't Leighton Meester born in prison

Armie Hammer.

Michael Weatherley

Robert Wagner: Not from wealthy but affluent parents.

Yoko Ono: Born into a Japanese banking dynasty. Inherited estate from John Lennon. Has run it since the mid-1970s. Current estimated value $700 million.

Mike Nesmith, WhiteOut Heiress.

R48 and what does that have to do with coming from a well-off family?

You should do another thread about which celeb had the most impoverished upbringing. Zayn Malik of 1d was very poor. His first time on a plane was on the X Factor. His dad stayed at home looking after his three sisters while his mother worked as a dinner lady for about £15k a year.

Most celebrities came either came from showbiz parents or upper middle class families. Now when it comes to blacks in Hollywood, it’s a little bit more measured. A lot of them came from upper middle class backgrounds as well, but many more humble beginnings. Will Smith, Taraji P Henson, Denzel, Halle Berry—all came from regular working class backgrounds.

And of course Viola was practically a Darfur orphan living in America.

Most modern celebrities come from nepotism or well-off families. It was the exact opposite back in the old days, when most stars came from abject poverty. Marilyn Monroe, Clark Gable, Greta Garbo, Barbara Stanwyck etc. It made them more interesting and unique. Someone like Katharine Hepburn, who came from a wealthy family, was an anomaly.

I lived in a parking lot.

Oh, R56, was that you I saw from the motel window?

R56 Mama and I scrubbed the piss from that parking lot every morning.

All of One Direction came from a poor background. Harry Styles grew up in a tiny terraced house and his mother was a pub landlord.

[quote]Someone like Katharine Hepburn, who came from a wealthy family, was an anomaly.

Miss Hepburn, and, of course, Miss Davis, had it easy. I came up hard.

In all seriousness, Joan Crawford had a nightmare childhood. It was Dickensian in its awfulness.

Almost anyone from the current crop of Brit actors: Tom Hiddleston, Benedict Cumberbatch, Tom Hardy, Rebecca Hall, Emily Blunt, Freddie Fox, Emily Mortimer, Tilda Swinton, Sebastian Croft, etc.

Look for the phrase "privately educated." Brits will use this to discredit someone (including polticians).

Vicki Krieps's father is the director general of the Ministry of Culture of Luxembourg, the former director of Sacem Luxembourg, and the former president of the Luxembourg Film Fund.

Léa Seydoux' is grandfather, Jérôme Seydoux, was the chairman of the Pathé film production company, and she is descended from the influential Schlumberger family. Her mother is a philanthropist.

Anya Taylor-Joy

Shirley Temple’s father was a wealthy banker.

Kid Rock supposedly.

Isn't this why Julliard is going tuition-free? And Yale Drama School? Enough with the rich semi-talented buying their way in to stardom -- as if nepotism wasn't good enough for them.

R65 He did. Classic new money. Dad owned a couple of car dealerships in the Detroit area. His childhood home is a modest mansion. You can Google it.

It sold for 2 million just last year.

It’s been my experience that rich people are more moral, on average, than poor people. I said what I said.

From the old days...

Jan Sterling and Gloria Grahame played tough broads but they grew up well-off

Tom Neal was from a rich family. Despite the trashy behavior

Olivia Wilde came from a rich background. Went to Andover. Father an editor for Forbes magazine.