From dropping dough on stolen dino bones to badmouthing their way out of millions, these stars are proof that making money and keeping it are two wildly different things... especially when you've got a $40k a week gambling addiction.
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00:00From dropping dough on stolen dino bones to bad-mouthing their way out of millions,
00:04these stars are proof that making money and keeping it are two wildly different things,
00:08especially when you've got a $40,000-a-week gambling addiction.
00:12Nicolas Cage's vast filmography includes plenty of classic performances, like his Oscar-nominated
00:16turn in Adaptation and his Oscar-winning role in Leaving Las Vegas. His on-screen success
00:21resulted in a fortune, but then his bizarre spending habits got in the way. Cage is a
00:25huge fan of Superman, and he once bought a copy of Action Comics No. 1, The Man of Steel's first
00:30appearance, for $150,000. Then there was the $276,000 dinosaur skull. But he especially
00:37loved dropping his cash on real estate, including two different castles in Europe.
00:41Eventually, it got to the point that the IRS filed a $6.3 million tax lien against him.
00:46Cage was forced to sell the comic book, and the dinosaur skull was seized after it was
00:50determined that it was stolen, although that didn't mean that Cage got his money back.
00:54In 2019, he told The New York Times,
00:57It's no secret that mistakes have been made in my past that I've had to try to correct.
01:00But one thing I wasn't going to do was file for bankruptcy. I had this pride thing where
01:04I wanted to work my way through anything, which was both good and bad."
01:08And work he did, as he reportedly filmed 20 movies in one two-year span.
01:12Kim Basinger may be an Oscar winner, but that didn't keep her out of bankruptcy court.
01:16In 1991, she backed out of the lead role of a small film called Foxy and Helena,
01:21and this breach of contract led to a lawsuit. It took years to go through the courts,
01:25with Basinger originally being told to pay over $8 million in damages and attorney's fees.
01:29This was later overturned on appeal, but not before she filed for Chapter 11.
01:33She eventually settled the dispute for $3.8 million.
01:37Basinger might have had more money available, if not for a strange purchase she made a couple
01:40of years earlier. In 1989, she and other investors spent $20 million to buy a small
01:45Georgia town near where she grew up. The original plans included building a movie studio, restoring
01:50the town's old buildings, and making a film about the area. But these dreams remained unrealized,
01:55and Basinger eventually began selling off pieces of her vast purchase to address her
01:58financial difficulties.
02:00"'Everybody seems to be kind of disappointed right now,
02:03because they thought when she bought this thing, they'd do something with it right away, I reckon."
02:08Stephen Baldwin might not be as famous as his older brother Alec or his son-in-law Justin Bieber,
02:12although he did make quite the impact in the 1995 crime flick The Usual Suspects.
02:17But that wasn't enough to prevent some serious financial troubles.
02:20In 2006, Baldwin tried to sell his New York home, but when there were no takers,
02:24he just stopped paying his mortgage. When he filed for bankruptcy in 2009,
02:28it was revealed that he actually had two mortgages on the home. It turned out that
02:31he owed a combined $1.2 million on them, while the house was only worth $1.1 million.
02:37He was also dealing with $1 million in back taxes and $70,000 in credit card debt.
02:42Baldwin managed to hold onto his home until 2017, when a judge ruled that the bank could
02:46auction it off and demanded that the actor vacate the property. But he didn't exactly
02:50learn his lesson when it came to paying his bills on time. In 2013, he was ordered to pay
02:55$400,000 in back taxes after failing to file for another three years, although that total
03:00was eventually reduced to $300,000. Gary Coleman found fame at a young age,
03:05in the late 70s and early 80s, on the classic sitcom Different Strokes,
03:08though he struggled to land another hit in the years to come. When he was about to turn 18,
03:13he gained access to his trust fund, but instead of the $18 million that it should have contained,
03:17there was less than a quarter million left. He eventually won a series of lawsuits against his
03:22parents and representative, although he only received $3.8 million, barely 20% of what he'd
03:27earned. Despite this relatively small victory, Coleman's financial problems continued. While he
03:32was cast in the occasional guest-starring TV role, he also began working non-showbiz jobs,
03:37most notably as a security guard. Alas, he lost that job in 1998 after
03:41assaulting a persistent autograph hunter. Then in 1999, he filed for bankruptcy.
03:46When he died in 2010 at the age of 42, he left a will that stated,
03:50"'I direct my personal representative to plan a wake for me conducted by those who have had
03:54no financial ties to me and can look each other in the eyes and say they really cared personally
03:58for Gary Coleman.'" Burt Reynolds' career was thriving in the 70s and 80s, thanks to hit films
04:03like Smokey and the Bandit and Deliverance. He spent the money he earned liberally on expensive
04:07properties, 150 horses, a private jet, and a helicopter. He also invested $20 million in a
04:13couple of restaurant chains. But the restaurants were failures, and he lost much of his fortune.
04:17"'I do silly things.'"
04:19Then there was his divorce from his longtime partner, Lonnie Anderson,
04:22which dragged on for years and racked up millions in attorney's fees.
04:25Anderson later accused him of often failing to pay child support for their son. She took
04:29him to court again decades later, which resulted in Reynolds paying Anderson everything he owed
04:34from the divorce. On top of all that, in 1996, CBS demanded that Reynolds pay back $3.7 million
04:40that the company had lent him. It eventually got so bad that he filed for bankruptcy.
04:44Despite his many financial issues, it doesn't sound like they weighed too heavily on his psyche.
04:48When Vanity Fair asked him in 2015 what his greatest regrets were, he replied,
04:53"'I would have spent more money and had a lot more fun.'"
04:56Debbie Reynolds was a successful singer and actor, but her divorce from Eddie Fisher became
05:00infamous, and the drama surrounding it overshadowed Reynolds' career.
05:04Then there were her notorious financial problems. In the midst of her second divorce,
05:08from businessman Harry Karl, she claimed that he'd blown her savings on his gambling addiction,
05:12by some estimates up to $100 million. While her first two marriages ended pretty badly,
05:17it was actually her third one that led her to bankruptcy court.
05:20In the 1970s, Reynolds started collecting Hollywood memorabilia. So when third husband
05:25Richard Hamlet recommended that she bid on a Las Vegas hotel that was up for auction in 1992,
05:29she bought it, with the intention of housing her enormous collection.
05:33But the Debbie Reynolds Hotel and Casino was a massive waste of money.
05:36While it only cost $200,000 to purchase, it cost another $2 million to fix up,
05:41and Reynolds had to ask for loans, sell some of her jewelry, and borrow against her other
05:45properties. A few years later, she sunk another $7 or $8 million into it. The venture lost millions
05:51every year, and Reynolds was forced to file for bankruptcy after failing to sell the hotel in 1997.
05:57David Cassidy was a massive star in the 1970s,
05:59thanks to his time on the musical sitcom The Partridge Family. But according to him,
06:03while the studio used his name and likeness to make $500 million off of merchandise from the
06:08show, he had to fight to get even a penny of it. As he told Yahoo in 2017,
06:13"'I saw 15 grand. Now that's corrupt. But I was the first person to renegotiate and get a piece
06:17of the show, the first person to get anything from these people.' It's little in comparison
06:21to today, but it was a lot then, and you have to put things in their proper perspective."
06:26I would have $80 million instead of $8 million now.
06:29"'They say you were a millionaire by the age of 21 or something like that?
06:33That must be a heck of a pressure on you.'"
06:35That extra money would have come in handy. Despite selling an estimated 30 million records
06:40in his career, Cassidy filed for bankruptcy in 2015 after spending over $2 million on a
06:44Florida mansion, as well as buying property in the Bahamas. This resulted in him owing
06:49hundreds of thousands of dollars to various creditors. Bankruptcy documents showed that
06:53he was spending $15,000 more each month than he was earning. His wife also filed for divorce
06:58around this time. He was eventually forced to auction off his home and belongings to pay off
07:02his debts. Comedian and actor Sinbad has filed for bankruptcy a couple of times. The first was in
07:082009, but the petition was denied because he filed incorrectly. Four years later, though,
07:12he got the documents right. Unfortunately, though, he owed just shy of $11 million to creditors,
07:18including a whopping $8.3 million in back taxes to the IRS. Meanwhile,
07:22he claimed to only have $131,000 in assets. According to Sinbad, he had been self-funding
07:28his business ventures, including the salaries of people who worked for his company. He also
07:32claimed that he always planned on honoring his debts.
07:34So I spent money. I kept thinking, okay, I'll get one more movie,
07:38and I'll wipe these bills out. But that movie didn't come."
07:40Sinbad also took offense to suggestions that he was living extravagantly. During his bankruptcy
07:45proceedings, he was required to attend a course on personal financial management.
07:49Mickey Rooney's life was full of ups and downs. He was a child star, he got married eight times,
07:54and he made $12 million before he turned 40. But he also had a bit of a gambling addiction.
07:59While he was playing Las Vegas in the 50s and 60s, he was making $20,000 per week. But then
08:04he would head to the casino and lose twice that much. Rooney first filed for bankruptcy in 1962,
08:09as he owed creditors about half a million dollars while only having $500 in assets.
08:14He filed for bankruptcy a second time, in 1996, after he ended up owing $1.75 million to the IRS
08:20and back taxes. He was still traveling around performing live at the age of 85,
08:24apparently because he was broke. In his later years, Rooney was allegedly abused both physically
08:29and financially by his eighth wife and stepson. The latter was accused of embezzling $8.5 million
08:35from Rooney, who was reportedly worth only $18,000 when he died in 2014 at the age of 93.
08:41Was he ever afraid for his safety, for his physical well-being?
08:45He was afraid, certainly psychologically afraid.
08:49Zsa Zsa Gabor enjoyed a long career in Hollywood, although she was perhaps more
08:53famous for her beauty and her extensive list of husbands. The Hungarian native
08:57also had her share of financial problems, many through no fault of her own.
09:01During the recession of the early 1990s, her various properties in California plummeted in
09:05value. Then in 2009, it emerged that she'd been swindled out of somewhere between $7
09:10and $10 million by Bernie Madoff. But then there was the problem that was very much of
09:14Gabor's own making — her feud with fellow actor Elke Zummer. The two had been sniping
09:18at each other for years when Gabor bad-mouthed Zummer in an interview.
09:22Zummer sued and eventually won a $3.3 million libel judgment against Gabor and her husband.
09:27Gabor filed for bankruptcy the following year.
09:30Gary Busey wasn't always known for being the eccentric character he is today. Back in 1978,
09:35he even turned in an Oscar-nominated performance in the lead role of the buddy Holly Story.
09:40But then, somewhere along the way, he lost most of his money. In 2012, he filed for bankruptcy,
09:45as he owed creditors over half a million dollars while having less than $50,000 in assets.
09:49In a statement to ABC News, the actor's attorney stated,
09:52As with many great American institutions — i.e., General Motors, American Airlines,
09:57and others — who have utilized the strategic business plan of bankruptcy,
10:00Gary's filing is the final chapter in a process that began a few years ago of
10:04jettisoning the litter of past unfortunate choices, associations, circumstances, and events.
10:09How am I doing today, Gary Busey? You're doing great! Good! Then I'll keep it up!
10:15In theory, the bankruptcy was successful. Busey was allowed to keep his limited assets,
10:19and almost $60,000 of his debts were discharged. But alas, the IRS doesn't allow for that when
10:24you owe it money. The vast majority of Busey's debts were to the government,
10:28which wanted a little more than $450,000 in back taxes, to emerge from bankruptcy
10:33owing almost as much as he did before.