Only money in the building: Selena Gomez is now a billionaire
Patrick Harbron/Hulu
Sure, Selena Gomez is a world-famous actress and singer, but it’s her makeup line that has made her a billionaire.
Bloombergreports that the star of Only Murders In the Building is one of the country’s youngest self-made female billionaires. According to the publication’s Billionaires Index, she’s worth $1.3 billion, and most of that — $1.1 billion — comes from Rare Beauty Brands Inc., her 5-year-old makeup brand.
Selena isn’t the first pop star to become a billionaire based on a makeup line: Rihanna hit that milestone in 2021 thanks to her line, Fenty Beauty.
Selena’s other income comes from brand partnerships, acting, music sales, streaming and her interest in her mental health start-up company, Wondermind, according to Bloomberg. Her past multimillion-dollar brand partnerships include Coach, Louis Vuitton and Puma SE. And she makes at least $6 million per season from Only Murders.
Stacy Jones, founder and CEO of LA-based branding company Hollywood Branded, tells Bloomberg Selena is “a multifaceted businesswoman with diverse income streams contributing to her impressive net worth.”
Brent Saunders, the CEO of Bausch + Lomb Corp, and an investor in Wondermind, tells Bloomberg that in Selena, “You’ve got a real role model of how a celebrity can use their influence and expertise to both do good and create good business.”
Kathy Bates is set to play the titular character in CBS’ upcoming Matlock reboot, and that may be the last we see of her.
The 76-year-old actress told The New York Times in a recent interview that she’s looking to retire after the series ends, saying, “This is my last dance.”
Adds Bates, “It becomes my life. Sometimes I get jealous of having this talent, because I can’t hold it back, and I just want my life.”
However, Matlock, a reworking of the legal drama that ran from 1986 to 1995 and starred the late Andy Griffith, was too tempting for her to turn down.
“Everything I’ve prayed for, worked for, clawed my way up for, I am suddenly able to be asked to use all of it,” Bates noted. “It’s exhausting.”
Matlock, also starring Beau Bridges, Jason Ritter, Skye P. Marshall, David Del Rio and Leah Lewis, premieres Sept. 22 on CBS.
Back in June, Sir Ian McKellen seemed to downplay a fall off a London stage during a performance of the Shakespeare adaptation Player Kings. A statement at the time said he was in good spirits and would make a speedy recovery. But now, several months later, McKellen reveals the whole thing was pretty scary.
“Apparently, I’m told by the company manager who’s holding my head as I lay on the floor, I said to her, ‘I’ve broken my neck. I’m dying,'” McKellen told ABC Audio in an interview from his home in London. “Now, I don’t remember saying that, but I must have felt it.”
He says he’s fine now, after fracturing his wrist and hurting his back, crediting the fat suit he was wearing in order to play rotund Knight John Falstaff with protecting his ribs and hips in the fall. And while physically he’s almost completely back to normal, the mental effects linger.
“I’m left with some disappointment,” McKellen confesses. “I’m ashamed that I didn’t complete — you know, my pride was bruised. How could this happen to me?” he asks with a chuckle. “And I suspect that although physically I’m healing, I wonder whether deep down there’s something mental or emotional that was jolted that needs to be attended to. And I’m attending to it by not working at the moment and resting.”
McKellen appears to be in a reflective mood as he discusses the fall, and his new film The Critic, in which he plays a prominent 1930s London theater critic named Jimmy Erskine, a once feared and respected tastemaker trying to recapture his glory days. Reviews, McKellen reveals, are a necessary evil for actors.
“We are seeking for approval. And we’re probably rather pathetic people who need that approval. We’re not confident enough of ourselves. So if you get a good review — oh, it’s an added pleasure. And if you get a bad review, it can be very hurtful,” McKellen admits.
And although he hasn’t been on the receiving end of a lot of bad reviews, the ones he has had are seared in his brain. Take for instance his turn in a Bernard Shaw revival in London’s West End when he was much younger. He starred in the play alongside a pre-Dame Judi Dench and recalls how he overheard a few fellow actors discussing his performance one night at a restaurant.
“One of them was going on and on and on about how dreadful I’d been. And I was typical of these modern young actors, using my voice in the wrong way and drawing attention to myself. And he just simply hadn’t enjoyed it.” McKellen says he laughed off the criticism, but the next night onstage it crept into his consciousness. “And as I looked into the audience talking away, I suddenly thought, ‘My God, every single person in this audience agrees with that actor that I heard last night. They all think I’m rubbish. I shouldn’t be here.’” He says he froze, forgot his lines and Dench had to rescue him.
Still, he swears if there’s a bad review out there, he’s going to read it. “I like to know. If people haven’t enjoyed the film of Cats I’d like to know about it.” 2019’s film adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Broadway musical Cats was savaged by critics, probably the worst-reviewed film McKellen has ever been in. McKellen didn’t get the blame, though. His portrayal of Gus the Theater Cat was mostly praised. And he may be returning to a role that garnered him some of the most praise of his film career: the mighty wizard Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings movies.
“There are going to be a couple of more films, I think, with some of the same characters in it. And I’ve been asked to stand by,” McKellen says. “But there’s no script that I read, and no date. All I can say, as far as I’m concerned, they better be quick.”
Quick, because at 85 years old, McKellen isn’t sure how much time he has left. “I’m rather living a year at a time, rather than two or three years at a time,” he says.
Gandalf is a part of his legacy, so if he can, he’s going to go to New Zealand and put on the robes. Legacy is a theme in The Critic, as well. In his downtime, legacy and what’s next are things McKellen has been thinking about a lot. He remembers going to visit a friend in the hospital, a friend who was dying, and asking him what he was thinking about as his life neared the end.
“And he said, ‘I don’t want to miss anything.’ And that’s rather my view,” McKellen says wistfully. He wants to know what’s going to happen. “How is AI going to really take over? I mean, what is life going to be like? When is the world going to settle down? Is the world going to survive? I won’t know. I won’t know. And I suppose I won’t care because I won’t exist.”
Ebon Moss-Bachrach and Billy Crudup won the Emmys for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series and Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series, respectively, during Sunday night’s 76th annual Emmy Awards.
Moss-Bachrach won for his role as Richie in the FX series The Bear, while Crudup was awarded for his portrayal of Cory Ellison in the Apple TV+ series The Morning Show.
The other nominees for Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series were Lionel Boyce, Paul W. Downs, Paul Rudd, Tyler James Williams and Bowen Yang.
In the Supporting Actor in a Drama Series category, the other nominees included Tadanobu Asano, Mark Duplass, Jon Hamm, Takehiro Hira and Jack Bowden.
