Forbes billionaires list 2026: The 16 celebrities in entertainment who made the cut

In 2014, Andre Young, AKA Dr Dre, declared himself a billionaire. He had just sold his Beats headphones company to Apple for $US3 billion.

But Dre didn’t own all of Beats, having started the business with Jimmy Iovine, and there were also private equity investors in the business. So, his boasting of his billionaire status was premature.

Twelve years later, Dre can finally walk the hallowed halls of the uber-elite, having for the first time made the Forbes billionaires club.

According to the magazine’s annual list, Dre is the 3332nd richest person on Earth with an estimated net worth of $US1 billion, derived primarily from his record label Aftermath Entertainment, which has over time represented the likes of Eminem, Kendrick Lamar and Snoop Dogg, and his sale of Beats.

Celebrities are among the most visible of high net worth individuals (which is just a fancy term for the obscenely rich), but among the almost 3500 people on Forbes’ billionaire list, famous people in movies, TV and music barely rate a mention.

There are only 16 celebrity billionaires from the entertainment industry, 22 if you count sportspeople such as Tiger Woods and LeBron James, which, we’re not.

None of the list are straight-up actors. We might see the likes of George Clooney and Scarlett Johansson in designer threads on red carpets, flying off in a private jet but, firstly, a lot of the time, they’re not paying for that themselves.

Second, while actors can command huge paydays – Robert Downey Jr was rumoured to have netted $US75 million from Avengers: Endgame – that is but a trickle in a waterfall compared to what the likes of Elon Musk (US839 billion), Jeff Bezos ($US224 billion) and Mark Zuckerberg ($US222 billion) profit in a day.

The overall Forbes billionaire list increased their wealth in 2025 by $US4 trillion, which is on average, more than a billion dollars for each person on that list. Insane.

In that teeny entertainment sub-section, there are filmmakers, musicians and lifestyle personalities, but what makes them uber-wealthy is ownership, rather than being a gun for hire.

STEVEN SPIELBERG

$US7.1 billion

Spielberg has directed some of the highest grossing movies of all time and has often secured “first dollar gross” deals, which means he gets paid a percentage of the box office even before the studio has made a profit. He is also an owner of Amblin Partners (Dreamworks and Amblin Entertainment), which produces many films, and Spielberg has a deal in which he takes a portion of every ticket sold at Universal’s theme parks because of Jaws and Jurassic Park attractions.

GEORGE LUCAS

$US5.2 billion

The Star Wars and Indiana Jones is a god to many, especially those Gen X-ers whose childhoods are inextricably linked to his creations. Lucas is less active in Hollywood these days, so his fortune has mostly come from his sale of Lucasfilm, which also included the visual effects house Industrial Light and Magic, to Disney for $US4 billion.

OPRAH WINFREY

$US3.2 billion

Oprah’s daytime talk show ran for over two decades, but she wasn’t just taking a salary, she was also the producer and owned the format trough Harpo Productions. She then started a TV network and has stakes in all manner of media and lifestyle brands. She also has a massive real estate portfolio including thousands of acres of land across the Hawaiian islands.

JAY-Z

$US2.8 billion

Jay-Z, legal name Shawn Carter, entered the billionaires club in 2019, becoming the first hip-hop artist to do so. He has interests in music, obviously, including his company Roc Nation, but the big money has come from his alcohol brands. He sold 50 per cent of his champagne label, Armand de Brignac, to LVMH, and a majority stake of his cognac brand, D’Usse, to Bacardi.

TAYLOR SWIFT

$US2 billion

As one of the most culture-moving music phenomena of this century, Swift’s empire comes from the value of her work. The Eras tour sold more than $US2 billion in tickets, and Swift’s team are very good at doing deals that sees her keeping a huge chunk of those sales, while her catalogue is worth an estimated $US900 million.

KIM KARDASHIAN

$US1.9 billion

The only Kardashian/Jenner to make the list, Kardashian is far from the Paris Hilton sidekick from The Simple Life. The reality show is still a thing, and she’s trying to make inroads into acting and the law, but her fortune comes from her stake in corsetry business Skims, which private investors have valued at $US5 billion.

PETER JACKSON

$US1.9 billion

Jackson did very well out of directing and producing the six Lord of the Rings and Hobbit movies, which between them grossed almost $US6 billion, but that didn’t make the Kiwi director one of the exalted few. His billionaire status from the 2021 partial sale of his stake of Weta FX for $US1.6 billion.

DICK WOLF

$US1.5 billion

Did you know that this month is the third season premiere of Law & Order Toronto: Criminal Intent? Probably not because it’s so hard to keep track of every show prolific producer Dick Wolf has going at any one point. Not just the long-running Law & Order franchise and its various spin-offs, but also the Chicago Med/Justice/PD/Fire and FBI shows. So many procedurals, and thanks to a deal he signed with Universal in 2004, he’s getting half the profits from syndication.

TYLER PERRY

$US1.4 billion

Perry doesn’t just direct, write, produce and star in his movies, he also owns 100 per cent of them, according to Forbes, including the commercially successful Madea movies. Often underestimated because his work isn’t exactly high art, Perry has created a fiefdom of film production, including a massive studio lot in Atlanta, which helps to keep costs down and maximise profits.

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN

$US1.2 billion

Springsteen is a music legend, obviously, and has sold 140 million albums over his career, and he is still actively touring, which is where the higher profit margin comes from. He also sold his music catalogue to Sony five years ago for $US500 million.

ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER

$US1.2 billion

Before he was the Governor of California, at his peak in the 1980s and 1990s, Arnie was a massively in demand star, and he leveraged that popularity to command not just big upfront cheques but back-end profit deals. The bigger money, though, is in shrewd investments, in both real estate and a stake in a trillion-dollar managed fund.

JERRY SEINFELD

$US1.1 billion

Look, it ain’t from his voice role in The Bee Movie, and it’s not from his comedy tours, although the latter is certainly more lucrative than the former. Where Seinfeld is collecting the hard cash is from the enduring popularity of Seinfeld, as in the TV show. He and co-creator Larry David reportedly still earns 15 per cent of its syndication revenue.

JAMES CAMERON

$US1.1 billion

There’s a saying in Hollywood, which is never bet against James Cameron. Even Avatar 3, which was greeted with mixed reviews and general malaise, still made, to date, $US1.48 billion. With Titanic and the first two Avatar movies, he holds three of the top four spots of the highest-grossing movies of all time. Cameron knows his worth and he has been negotiating very beneficial profit-sharing deals.

RIHANNA

$US1 billion

RiRi hasn’t released since January 2016 and she’ll never have to do another one ever again if she doesn’t want to. What she has is Fenty, the cosmetics campaign she co-owns with LVMH and is valued at up to $US2 billion.

BEYONCÉ

$US1 billion

Beyoncé Knowles-Carter made her way onto the Forbes billionaire list in the past year, the same period in which she finally won Album of the Year at the Grammys and embarked on the hugely successful Cowboy Carter tour. Unlike her husband, most of her fortune comes from music career, stretching back to her Destiny’s Child days.

DR DRE

$US1 billion

He did it, Dr Dre has finally fulfilled his own prophecy. Although, he technically wasn’t forecasting in 2014 as claiming he already was a billionaire. But now, it’s bona fide, in so far as Forbes declares it to be. Dr Dre’s worth is derived from his record label and the sale of Beats to Apple, which also included a big chunk in stock, which if he held onto it, is quite a bit higher than in 2014.