Known for: The Godfather and Reds
Net worth: $50 million
Diane Keaton is quirky, she’s funny, she’s truly adorable. Her breakout film was one of the most significant cinematic events of the Seventies and Eighties, The Godfather . She played Kay Corleone in all three of The Godfather trilogies. She was discovered by her work with Woody Allen. She co-starred with the storied director in Play it Again, Sam (1972). After The Godfather , Keaton continued to star in Woody Allen films like Sleeper, Love and Death , and Annie Hall , the latter winning the Best Actress Academy Award.
As a lover of old architecture, she is active with the Los Angeles Conservatory which refurbishes and saves historic buildings. She also enjoys writing and is a regular contributor at The Huffington Post . She also got into real estate development in the Los Angeles area, purchasing and renovating old mansions. Madonna scored one of her Beverly Hills remodels.
Gene Hackman
Known for: Unforgiven, French Connection, and The Conversation
Net worth: $80 million
Gene Hackman is done with acting. He put in his 60 years and he doesn’t want to do it anymore. But, you know, if the perfect character rolls by he might just grab it. He certainly does not want to play some grandpa. What he loves to do is write, paint, and race cars. In 2016, he won the Long Beach Grand Prix Celebrity Race.
Hackman was born in 1930 to parents who ran a newspaper printing press. He dropped out of high school for the Marines (lying about his age to get in) but left the service after a year. He and his high school buddy, Dustin Hoffman, were slated “least likely to succeed,” yet somehow, he made it to Broadway. A fortuitous role in a 1964 Broadway play called Any Wednesday kicked off his career. It led him to a small role in Warren Beatty’s film Bonnie and Clyde which earned him a Best Supporting Actor Academy nomination. He won the Oscar for Detective “Popeye” Doyle in The French Connection. By age 40, he had cemented himself as a cinematic legend.
Malcolm McDowell
Known for: A Clockwork Orange and Caligula
Net worth: $70 million
Malcolm McDowell is an Englishman who became Hollywood’s “go-to bad guy” after his role in Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange , playing a sadistic and sociopathic gang leader with a penchant for Beethoven. As for the “bad guy” label, he told KQED news, “I think, honestly, if you start your career playing sort of hugely immoral characters, which are always, of course, the most interesting, then you kind of get stuck with it. And if you play them with a certain relish then you really are in trouble.”
McDowell also gained notoriety as Caligula (1979). The very controversial Italian film about the rise and fall of the notorious Roman Emperor was so explicit that Penthouse produced it. During his reign, Caligula strove to increase an emperor’s unrestrained power and used it tyrannously in sadistic acts of murder and sexual perversion. He was known for his excessive sexual proclivities as well as for killing people for amusement. The perfect fit for McDowell. He also played in Star Trek Generations, Halloween II and Mississippi Murder. Look out for Fair and Balanced, in which McDowell is cast as the infamous Robert Murdoch.
Bruce Dern
Known for: The Great Gatsby and The Cowboys
Net worth: $20 million
Bruce Dern hasn’t slowed down. He starred in Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood ; plus, The Mustang , The Peanut Butter Falcon , and The Artist’s Wife . The latter three all 2019 releases! As one of the most prolific actors in Hollywood, Dern’s filmography, starring in over a hundred films spanning six decades, is a trailing list. He’s popular as the villain, having cemented that image as the bad guy in 1960s westerns like Cowboys , in which he notoriously shot John Wayne in the back. When told Americans would hate him for that, he famously quipped, “Yeah, but they’ll love me in Berkeley.”
Dern trained as a stage actor at The Actor’s Studio under Elia Kazan. He debuted in Kazan’s Wild River and became a talented television actor on shows such as Alfred Hitchcock Presents. He won a Best Actor Award at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival for Nebraska as well as being nominated for an Oscar. In Coming Home, he was nominated for Best Supporting Actor. He received acclaim for The Championship Season also.
Whoopi Goldberg
Known for: The Color Purple and Sister Act
Net worth: $45 million
Whoopi Goldberg is known for a lot of things, but did you know she built her career performing small parts on Broadway and laying bricks in a funeral home? We all know Whoopi’s ’80s stand-up acts were phenomenally funny. And we know that she worked the improv circuit for some time before she hit the big screen with blockbuster movies like Sister Act and Ghost .
In The Color Purple, she proved her dramatic forte with an Oscar nomination. She continued to prove her genius. She’s now an EGOT club member. Hosting the popular talk show, The View earned her a Daytime Emmy Award and a lot of love. She produced Thoroughly Modern Millie, winning a Tony Award. And she won an Academy Award for Ghost. But with all these awards and accolades on her side, did you know it was her original, one-woman Broadway production, “The Spook Show,” that launched her movie career? The show became so popular, it made it all the way to HBO. The network taped her performance and called it, Whoopi Goldberg. It premiered on HBO in1985.