She has amassed a fortune over the years that is multiple times the size of several of the wealthiest Hollywood stars’ net worths.
And her path to unimaginable wealth would seem simple enough, since she’s married to a multi-billionaire businessman who founded multiple private-equity firms.
But, according to Jami Gertz, she acquired her own multi-billion-dollar fortune thanks to her and her husband’s ingenuity, as she was making more money than he was when they first met in the 1980s.
The 59-year-old Twister actress is worth around $8 billion now, according to Celebrity Net Worth, which makes her far wealthier than some of Hollywood biggest stars, including Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt and Jennifer Lopez.
Gertz’s riches even exceeds that of other famously wealthy artists, like Taylor Swift, who is worth $1.6 billion after the success of her Eras Tour, and Steven Spielberg, who blockbuster films and enviable contracts have made him worth around $5.3 billion.
As Gertz explains it, she put her lucrative acting career on the back burner after getting married and focused on joining her husband Tony Ressler — worth $10.9 billion, according to Forbes — in making high-profile business deals.
In a 2018 Hollywood Reporter profile, Lost Boys star clarified that her ascent to the ranks of the ultra-wealth wasn’t as simple as just marrying into wealth.
‘Everyone thinks I married a rich guy,’ she said. ‘But I made more money — way more money — than Tony when I met him.
‘I paid for our first house. I paid for our first vacation,’ she continued. ‘I married him because I fell in love with him.’
At the time, Gertz was starring with her Lost Boys costar Jason Patric in a small play ‘about two people committing suicide every night.’
In the same profile, Ressler said he didn’t know much about his future wife at the time, other than that she was a ‘working actress,’ and he wasn’t even familiar with the films and TV shows she had made up to that point.
But the connection was instantaneous for the two, though Gertz joked that her family might have preferred it if she had married ‘a doctor or a lawyer.’
Gertz would go on to have high-profile success alongside some of the biggest stars of the 1980s and beyond.