- Rapper and fashion designer Kanye West is Hollywood's newest billionaire.
- Forbes inducted West into the three-comma club on April 24.
- Film directors and television personalities dominate the list of Tinseltown's wealthiest — but it doesn't contain anyone who has built a career solely off acting.
- Many of Hollywood's billionaires, including Jay-Z, made their fortunes from business ventures.
- Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.
A lot of Hollywood entertainers are extremely wealthy — but fewer than you might think are actually billionaires.
What sets these five billionaire entertainers and studio executives apart from their peers is not only that they excelled in the industry, but that they leveraged their success to make investments that provide significant income beyond their salaries.
Hollywood's billionaires' club may not stay small for long, however, as more and more stars launch their own clothing and beauty lines. Two celebrities — Jay-Z and Kanye West — became billionaires in the past two years alone, thanks to their solid investment strategies.
Tinseltown's three comma club actually once had a sixth member — Kylie Jenner. Forbes named the 23-year-old influencer the world's youngest self-made billionaire in 2019 only to revoke the title a little over a year later, saying that Jenner's team inflated her wealth in documents they provided to the publication about Jenner's assets and her company's revenue.
Keep reading for a closer look at how the Hollywood celebrities who are also billionaires built their respective fortunes.
Kanye West is Hollywood's newest billionaire, although his exact net worth is disputed.
West may have made a lot of money from his hit albums, but it's his streetwear brand Yeezy that made him a billionaire, Forbes reports. Forbes estimates that West is worth $1.3 billion. Meanwhile, West has claimed that he's actually worth $3.3 billion.
According to Forbes, West's fortune is divided between a $1.26 billion stake in athletic wear brand Yeezy, $17 million in cash, $35 million in stocks, $21 million in real estate, $3,845,162 worth of vehicles, $297,050 of livestock, and $53 million in debt shared with his wife, Kim Kardashian West.
Jay-Z's investments made him the world's first billionaire rapper, with a net worth of $1 billion.
Jay-Z pocketed approximately $500 million from his 14 No. 1 albums before taxes, but a large portion of his wealth comes from his business ventures, Forbes reported in 2019. He founded a clothing line that he sold to Iconix for $204 million in 2007 and co-owns cognac brand D'Ussé, in addition to owning music streaming service Tidal.
Jay-Z bought Tidal for $56 million in 2015. In 2017, Sprint bought a 33% stake in the company for $200 million, which put the company's valuation at $600 million. Jay-Z's stake was worth $100 million last year, according to Forbes.
In 2019 alone, Jay-Z earned a total of $81 million, according to the Forbes Celebrity 100 list, which put him at No. 20 among the year's highest-earning celebrities.
Media mogul Oprah Winfrey is worth $2.5 billion.
Born to a single mother in rural Mississippi, Winfrey started out as a news anchor before spending 25 years hosting "The Oprah Winfrey Show." The investments Winfrey made with her share of the show's profits are now worth about $2 billion, Forbes estimates. She became a billionaire in 2003, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Winfrey, now 66, leveraged her show's success to build a media empire and amassed a fortune of $2.5 billion in the process, according to Forbes. She owns 25.5% of her television network OWN, an 8% stake in WW International, and has a content creation deal with Apple TV+.
Oprah has also voiced characters in "Charlotte's Web,""The Bee Movie," and "The Princess and the Frog," in addition to starring in "Lee Daniels' The Butler" and "Selma," among others, according to The Oprah Magazine.
Three-time Academy Award-winning director Steven Spielberg is worth $3.7 billion, according to Forbes.
The box office success of "Jaws,""E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial," and "Jurassic Park," among others, have made Spielberg the top-grossing director of all time.
According to Forbes, most of Spielberg's fortune comes from his films, but he has also profited from his role as a consultant for Universal theme parks and the sale of DreamWorks Animation to NBCUniversal for $3.8 billion in 2016.
Spielberg co-founded DreamWorks Pictures alongside Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen. While Forbes estimates that he's worth $3.7 billion, Bloomberg's Billionaires Index puts his net worth much higher, at $6.73 billion.
George Lucas, the creator of the "Star Wars" and "Indiana Jones" franchises, is worth $5.7 billion, Forbes reports.
Lucas may be the brains behind two of the most well-known film franchises of our time, but he made most of his money by selling his production studio Lucasfilm to Disney for $4.05 billion in cash and stock in 2012, according to Bloomberg.
"Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace," released in 1999, was the top-grossing film Lucas directed and produced, raking in nearly $1.03 billion worldwide, according to IMDB.
While Forbes estimates that Lucas is worth $5.7 billion, the Bloomberg Billionaires Index pegs his net worth markedly higher, at $7.62 billion.
While Lucas originally aspired to be a racecar driver, he decided to pursue filmmaking after nearly dying in a car crash. Lucas studied filmmaking at USC before founding Lucasfilm, according to the university's website. Lucas retired from his studio in 2012 in order to turn his attention to independent films, according to The New York Times.