17 Celebs Who Opened Up About Being Famous But Not Ultra Wealthy

Fame and wealth often go hand-in-hand — but not always. Sometimes, people with widely recognizable names don't have the level of unimaginable wealth we associate with a celebrity, whether because they struggled to manage their finances or because they struggled to find work. Other times, they're "I can pay off my house" rich, but not, like, "I can buy three $100 million houses" rich.

Here are 17 celebs who opened up about being famous but not ultra-wealthy:

1.After blowing through all the money he made from "Parents Just Don't Understand" and releasing a flop album, Will Smith was broke and indebted to the IRS. In a YouTube video, he said, "Being famous and broke is a shitty combination, 'cuz you still famous, and people recognize you, but they recognize you while you sitting next to them on the bus."

2.Sydney Sweeney, who lived in a single room with her entire family when they first moved to LA, told the Hollywood Reporter, "I want to have a family...[but] I was worried that, if I don't work, there is no money and no support for kids I would have. If I wanted to take a six-month break [to have a baby], I don't have income to cover that. I don't have someone supporting me; I don't have anyone I can turn to, to pay my bills or call for help."

She continued, "They don't pay actors like they used to, and with streamers, you no longer get residuals. The established stars still get paid, but I have to give five percent to my lawyer, 10 percent to my agents, three percent or something like that to my business manager. I have to pay my publicist every month, and that's more than my mortgage. ... If I just acted, I wouldn't be able to afford my life in LA. I take deals because I have to."

3.In a YouTube video about how she lost all the money she made during her Disney Channel days through overspending, Christy Carlson Romano said that, after spending everything she'd earned, she had to start taking roles purely for financial reasons. She said, "There was a specific movie [Mirrors 2] that I actually did that I'm not proud of. I did a nude scene. I had never thought in a million years that I would ever do something like this — I was America's sweetheart, morally sound in my mind. I believed in the Disney magic; I still do. I felt so exploited, marked, and horrible."

She also said, "My biggest thing about child actors — you aren't told that the work is going to slow down. In fact, I was told the opposite, specifically by my mom, some of my team, even my money manager at the time. 'Oh, don't worry, the residuals come; you're going to keep making money.' It's interesting, it bred a sort of contempt in me. It's a tremendous amount of pressure, and I think I self-destructed."

4.Though The Kissing Booth made Jacob Elordi an overnight celebrity, he struggled to book roles afterwards. He ended up sleeping in his car or crashing at a friend's until he got a part in Euphoria, where a producer helped him rent a hotel room. He told GQ, "I got really lucky. Which is just an LA story, you know?"

He also said, "I think I had — I don't know, $400 or $800 left in my bank account — and Euphoria was my last audition before I went home for a little while to make some money and recuperate."

5.With her first recording contract, Toni Braxton made her label $170 million in album sales, but she was only paid $1,972 in royalties, which contributed to her first bankruptcy. She told 20/20, "What happens is they give you advancement [that you have to pay back] on the next record and then the next record. So, you kind of stay in debt, in a sense."

After a career resurgence in 2000, then a trio of poorly performing albums, she self-financed a revue show in Las Vegas. However, after being diagnosed with microvascular angina and lupus, she had to cancel. This led to her second bankruptcy.

6.In court documents pertaining to her divorce from Peter Loughran in 2013, Lena Headey said, "At the present time, I have less than $5 in my bank account and have been using credit cards to pay for living expenses for myself and our son Wylie."

She also said that they "burned through their savings" and "incurred a substantial amount of consumer debt to pay for our living expenses during marriage" because, after her pregnancy, insurance companies decided she was uninsurable, and she was unable to work.

7.After Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide ended, Devon Werkheiser booked smaller parts and lived on his savings until they ran out at 25. He told Insider, "Over the years, supporting-role jobs started paying less in the industry, and at the same time, I was booking less and less. The only thing I knew to do was to go get some hourly job and start working my way out of my situation. I got a 9-to-5 for the first time in my life. It was a real wake-up call for me."

He continued, "I realized I still had a lot to learn about adult-life. And I know there's people out there who can relate — Ned's helped people my age with tips on middle school, but over a decade later, that audience that grew up with me has been in my DMs like, 'Where's Ned's guide to college?' or 'Where's Ned's guide to adulting?'"

The experience inspired him to start an advice podcast, Growing Up with Devon.

8.T-Pain told The Breakfast Club that, due to overspending and "bad investments," he went from having $40 million in the bank to having nothing to his name. He said, "I, like, had to borrow money to get my kids Burger King."

He said, "I was letting my manager do [my real-estate investments], and he was way more optimistic than I was. ... [We] never sold anything that we bought. ... We just had to let everything go."

9.Ke Huy Quan made his big comeback to acting with Everything Everywhere All at Once, but when production paused for eight months due to the COVID-19 pandemic, he was unable to book any more roles. On The Late Late Show with James Corden, he said, "I was so nervous. I was about to lose my health insurance. So, I called my agent, and I said, 'Can you please get me anything? It doesn't matter, I just need one job to make the minimum requirement so I can qualify for health insurance the following year.'"

He continued, "And I could not get one single job. Sure enough, 2021 came and went, and I lost my health insurance."

10.Mayim Bialik left acting to pursue neuroscience, but she accepted a role on The Big Bang Theory so that she could get health insurance through the Screen Actors Guild. She told the Social, "I had a toddler and a newborn, and I had been a grad student, and my insurance was expiring. ... I figured if I can just get even a couple of jobs like here or there, I'll be able to get insurance again."

She continued, "I did not expect to be a regular on a television show. I had been teaching neuroscience. I've tutored Hebrew. I've tutored piano. I wear a lot of hats, you know. ... [The show] changed my life, and I got insurance."

11.Speaking on Capitol Hill in support of the Paycheck Fairness Act, Michelle Williams told lawmakers, "In late 2017, the news broke that I had been paid less than $1,000 compared to the $1.5 million that my male counterpart had received for the exact same amount of work [for reshoots on All the Money in the World]. And guess what? No one cared."

She continued, "This came as no surprise to me, it simply reinforced my life-learned belief that equality was not an inalienable right and that women would always be working just as hard for less money, while shouldering more responsibility in their homes. And if it was like this for me, a white woman in a glamourized industry, how were my sisters suffering across their professions?"

12.After his UFC release, MMA fighter Kevin Lee told the The Fighter vs. the Writer podcast, "We can’t take away too much from the UFC — they do a great job of promoting, but it kind of sucks being famous but not being rich. That's not really the goal. This is America. We value the dollar more than anything. Be rich first, and then be famous."

He continued, "When I’m giving advice to young fighters on what they should do and where they should be, I tell them the UFC ain't top dog no more. Maybe in terms of promotion, but if you just want people to know who you are, you can do a whole lot more shit that this. If you're in it to provide for your family and do some other stuff, there's some more options out there."

13.In 2014, American Pie actor Chris Owen was working as a server at a sushi restaurant. He told the NY Daily News, "Life doesn't always go the way you planned. I love acting, and this job lets me stay in the fight."

He continued, "I get recognized a lot. I walk up to the table and see the look in their eyes. ... People get excited, and it feels good. I like connecting with people for that brief moment in time."

14.Similarly, in 2011, Hairspray star Nikki Blonsky was working at a salon. On Twitter, she said, "Its true Im workin @ Superstar Salon as a makeup artist & more Im proud 2 b workin & helpin pay bills BUT ill NEVER loose sight of my dreams [sic]."

In another tweet, she added, "Just cause Im part time workin doesnt mean Im gonna give up on my dreams n dont give up on urs I might book something big soon keep positive [sic]."

15.On a 2016 episode of Life or Debt, Aaron Carter said, "Financially, I'm in a terrible position. When I turned 18, I got hit with all those taxes. I filed a Chapter 7 bankruptcy last year; now, I'm already over $100,000 in debt."

"It's been really difficult for me. I want to have a life set up. I want to have a house. I can’t tell you how badly I want to have a home," he added.

He also said that, at 18, he signed his millions over to his parents so they wouldn't go to prison for tax evasion. At the time of the interview, he had no savings and overdrew his bank account.

16.Though they made more than $2 million a year during their time on The Hills, Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt squandered nearly everything as fast as they earned it. She told People, "I was feeling so alone and defeated. Everyone else on our cast had houses, and we had nothing to show for what we'd done. I was like, the haters were right! It was sad."

Pratt said, "We were keeping up with the Joneses, but we were going against Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes. We should have stayed in our reality TV lane."

Montag added, "I felt like I was someone I wasn't. We had business managers who told us to stop spending, but we acted like we knew what we were doing."

17.And finally, in 2018, The Cosby Show actor Geoffrey Owens was working at Trader Joe's. He told Good Morning America, "I wanted a job where I could have some flexibility [regarding auditions and such]. I didn't advertise it, not because I was ashamed of it, but because I didn't want the acting community to think that I wasn't pursuing acting anymore."

He added, "No one should feel sorry for me. I've had a great life, a great career."