While some celebrities have no choice but to start from the bottom to pursue their Hollywood dreams, some lucky ones were born into wealthy families, including the likes of Kyra Sedgwick, Paul Giamatti, and Scarlett Johansson. For your entertainment, we’ve listed 20 A-listers who grew up with veritable fortunes.
Great-grandfather: Endicott Peabody, founder of the Groton School
Relative: William Ellery, a signer of the United States Declaration of Independence
Father: Henry Dwight Sedgwick V, a venture capitalist
Father: A. Bartlett Giamatti, the president of Yale University, and the seventh Commissioner of Major League Baseball
Grandfather: Ejner Johansson, an art historian, screenwriter, and film director
Father: Karsten Olaf Johansson, an architect
Mother: Melanie Sloan, a producer
Grandfather: Dino De Laurentiis, a prolific film producer
Father: Alex De Benedetti, an actor, and producer
Mother: Veronica De Laurentiis, an author, and actress
Grandfather: James Rouse, an urban planner and real estate developer who founded The Rouse Company, which developed the city of Columbia and Maryland
Father: Edward Norton Sr., a former federal prosecutor who worked in President Jimmy Carter’s administration
Father: Edward Butera, the CEO of Ibi Designs Edward Butera
Mother: Joan Grande, the CEO of Hose-McCann Communications
Father: Wyatt Emory Cooper, an author, screenwriter, and actor
Mother: Gloria Vanderbilt, an artist, fashion designer, writer, and heiress of the Vanderbilt family
Father: Will Smith
Mother: Jada Pinkett Smith
Father: Fred Levine, the founder of retail chain M. Fredric
Father: John, an art curator, and lecturer
Mother: Imogen, a jewelry designer
Father: Tony Curtis, a screen legend
Mother: Janet Leigh, a hugely successful actress
Father: Stephen Gyllenhaal, a film director
Mother: Naomi Foner, a film producer, and screenwriter
Father: Scott Kingsley Swift, stockbroker
Mother: Andrea Gardner Swift, a mutual fund marketing executive before giving up her career to be a homemaker
Father: Park Won-Ho, the executive chairman of the DI Corporation
Mother: Kim Young-hee, owner of several high-end restaurants in Seoul
Father: Gérard Louis-Dreyfus, chairman of the Louis Dreyfus Company
Mother: Judith, a writer, and special needs tutor
Father: Timothy Christopher Mara, the vice president of the New York Giants, whose family founded the team
Mother: Kathleen McNulty, whose family founded the Pittsburgh Steelers
Great-grandfather: Armand Hammer, an oil tycoon
Father: Michael Armand Hammer, a businessman who owns several businesses
Father: Frank Shields, an executive at Revlon
Mother: Teri Shields, a model who came from Italian nobility
Father: Quincy Jones, a music legend
Father: Brian Williams, a news anchor on NBC Nightly News
Mother: Jane Gillan Stoddard, a TV producer
