Jami Gertz is an American actress and philanthropist who became widely known in the 1980s and 1990s through roles in films like Sixteen Candles, The Lost Boys, and Twister, as well as TV shows such as Still Standing. Born on October 28, 1965, in Chicago, Illinois, she began her career in entertainment at a young age and quickly built a reputation as a versatile actress. Over time, she gradually stepped back from acting to focus more on her personal life and business interests after marrying billionaire investor Tony Ressler, co-founder of Apollo Global Management and principal owner of the NBA’s Atlanta Hawks.
Beyond her acting career, Jami Gertz is also recognized as one of the wealthiest actresses in the world due to her marriage and shared business ventures with her husband. The couple is deeply involved in philanthropy, particularly through donations in education, healthcare, and community development. Despite her immense wealth, she is known for maintaining a relatively low public profile compared to other celebrity figures, choosing to focus on family life, charitable work, and supporting her husband’s business and sports ownership activities.
Also More: Melina Gallo
Bio Table
| Detail | Information |
| Full Name | Jami Beth Gertz |
| Date of Birth | October 28, 1965 |
| Birthplace | Chicago, Illinois, USA |
| Hometown | Glenview, Illinois (suburb of Chicago) |
| Age (2025) | 59 years old |
| Zodiac Sign | Scorpio |
| Nationality | American |
| Ethnicity | Jewish-American |
| Religion | Conservative Judaism |
| Father | Walter Gertz (builder and contractor) |
| Mother | Sharyn Gertz |
| Siblings | Two brothers—Michael and Scott |
| High School | Maine East High School, Park Ridge, Illinois |
| College | New York University (NYU), Tisch School of the Arts |
| Discovered By | Norman Lear — nationwide talent search, age 16 |
| Debut | Endless Love (1981); Diff’rent Strokes (TV) |
| Breakout Role | Star — The Lost Boys (1987) |
| Notable Films | Crossroads (1986), Less Than Zero (1987), The Lost Boys (1987), Twister (1996) |
| Notable TV | Square Pegs, Seinfeld (“The Stall”), Ally McBeal, Still Standing, The Neighbors, This Is Us |
| Emmy Nomination | Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series — Ally McBeal (2001) |
| Razzie Nomination | Twister (1997) |
| Production Company | Lime Orchard Productions (founded 2007) |
| Notable Production | A Better Life (2011) — Demián Bichir, Oscar-nominated |
| Paris Detour | Worked as a scent designer for Lanvin |
| Husband | Tony (Antony) Ressler (married 1989) |
| Children | One daughter; three sons—Oliver, Nicholas, Theo |
| Met Tony | 1986, through her publicist at a dinner party |
| Was Breadwinner | Yes—paid for their first home and early vacations |
| Tony’s Companies | Apollo Global Management (co-founder, 1990); Ares Management (co-founder, 1997) |
| AUM Combined | Over $1 trillion across both firms |
| Atlanta Hawks | Majority owners since 2015—purchase price approximately $720 million |
| Milwaukee Brewers | Minority stake owners |
| Malibu Home | Purchased 1993, $3.5 million |
| LACMA Donation | $50 million to Los Angeles County Museum of Art |
| Top Charity Award | Named #1 celebrity charitable donors by The Giving Back Fund (2010) |
| Board Memberships | Melanoma Research Alliance, Camp Painted Turtle |
| Estimated Net Worth | $12 billion (combined with Tony Ressler) |
| Richest Celebrity | #1 globally — ahead of Spielberg, Lucas, and Oprah |
| Present but largely private |
A Contractor’s Daughter from Glenview Who Changed Everything
Did you know Jami Gertz grew up in a suburb of Chicago, not in a Hollywood household? Her father built things for a living. Her mother kept the family grounded. There was no showbiz legacy, no agent uncle, no industry connections waiting to be activated. There was just a girl from Glenview with a talent people kept noticing and a drive nobody had to manufacture for her.
She attended Maine East High School in Park Ridge, Illinois, the same institution that produced Harrison Ford and Hillary Rodham Clinton, two names that suggest the school had a particular knack for turning out people who reshaped whatever room they walked into. From early childhood, Jami was drawn to performance. She studied ballet and appeared in local theater productions before anyone outside her community had any reason to pay attention.
The moment that changed everything arrived when she was sixteen years old. Television producer Norman Lear organized a nationwide talent search, the kind of sweeping effort that could find raw ability in places the industry typically overlooked. The search reached Illinois. Jami auditioned. Norman Lear saw what he needed to see.
She later recalled that she was simply thrown into the work and never looked back. She also noted that at sixteen, she was already earning more money than her father. The fact that a teenager from a contractor’s household out-earned her dad through acting shifted the entire dynamic of her family life in ways that stayed with her for decades.
NYU, Norman Lear, and the Career That Launched in a Hurry
After high school, Jami enrolled at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, where she studied drama. But even before she had finished her education, the industry was already pulling her in. She appeared in the 1981 romance film Endless Love while still essentially a newcomer, and picked up a television role on Diff’rent Strokes as one of her earliest on-screen credits.
Her recurring role on The Facts of Life as Blair’s friend Boots St. Clair gave her consistent television exposure in the early 1980s. Then came Square Pegs, the CBS sitcom that ran from 1982 to 1983, where she appeared alongside a young Sarah Jessica Parker. The show only lasted one season, but it planted her name firmly in the consciousness of a generation of viewers.
In between all of this, she did something genuinely unexpected: she went to Paris and spent time working as a scent designer for Lanvin, the French fashion house. It was a creative detour that said everything about who Jami Gertz was becoming: someone who refused to be defined entirely by one lane, even when that lane was Hollywood.
The 1980s: Three Roles That Still Live Rent-Free in Pop Culture
By the mid-to-late 1980s, Jami had built a body of work that would have satisfied most careers entirely. Crossroads and Quicksilver both arrived in 1986. Then, 1987 delivered two films back-to-back that cemented her place in the cultural memory of that decade.
Less Than Zero, based on Bret Easton Ellis’s novel, placed her alongside Robert Downey Jr. in a devastating story about youth, addiction, and the hollow side of wealth. She played Julie, the friend caught in the wreckage, and the film gave her the kind of material that showed she could do far more than teen comedies.
Then came The Lost Boys. Directed by Joel Schumacher and starring Kiefer Sutherland, Jason Patric, and a memorable cast of vampires, the film cast Jami as Star, the mysterious woman caught between the human world and something darker. The role became iconic. Over three decades later, The Lost Boys still generates merchandise, retrospectives, and devoted fan communities. Star is still one of the defining characters of 1980s genre cinema.
Did you know she also auditioned for the female leads in Pretty Woman and Speed? Both roles went to other actresses who became global superstars from those parts. It is one of the more striking “what if” moments in her career and proof that the entertainment industry’s version of fate is largely unpredictable.
Television, Seinfeld, and the Emmy Nomination
Jami Gertz was never absent from television for long. Through the 1990s and 2000s, she moved fluidly across the landscape, taking guest roles, recurring parts, and lead positions across different formats and tones.
Her 1994 appearance on Seinfeld remains one of the most-discussed cameos in the series. She played Jane, the girlfriend who refuses to share toilet paper in a public restroom, a role so perfectly matched to the show’s specific comedic logic that it has stayed alive in pop culture far longer than most single-episode appearances do.
Her recurring role as Kimmy Bishop on Ally McBeal from 2000 to 2002 earned her an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series. The character, a love interest for the brilliantly awkward John Cage, required comedic precision and emotional timing, and the nomination confirmed what people who had watched her work closely already knew.
She went on to lead Still Standing, a CBS sitcom that ran from 2002 to 2006, playing Judy Miller alongside British actor Mark Addy. The show gave her the longest single run of her television career and introduced her comedy to an entirely different generation of viewers who had been too young for The Lost Boys.
The Neighbors followed from 2012 to 2014 on ABC a science fiction sitcom that cast her as the mother of a human family navigating life in a neighborhood populated by aliens. Forty-four episodes. Recurring roles on This Is Us and Difficult People came after that.
The Dinner Party, the Financier, and the Most Important Misunderstanding in Her Story
In 1986, Jami’s publicist introduced her to a man named Antony Ressler at a dinner party in Los Angeles. Tony Ressler was a financier working at Drexel Burnham Lambert, one of Wall Street’s most aggressive firms at the time. He did not recognize her from her films. He simply wanted to spend more time with her.
Here is the part that gets misrepresented constantly: when they began their relationship, Jami was the one with money. She paid for their first home. She covered their early vacations. She was the working professional building an active career while Tony was navigating the instability of a Wall Street world that was about to implode around him. Drexel collapsed. His career was temporarily in freefall.
They married in 1989. And then Tony Ressler, starting over with three fellow Drexel colleagues, including his brother-in-law Leon Black, co-founded Apollo Global Management in 1990. He later co-founded Ares Management in 1997. Today, Apollo manages over five hundred billion dollars in assets. Ares manages over six hundred billion. Tony Ressler’s personal net worth has been estimated by Forbes at approximately thirteen point eight billion dollars.
Jami has never stopped correcting the record on how their relationship began. She has said publicly, “Everyone thinks I married a rich guy. But I made more money, way more money, than Tony when I met him. I paid for our first house. I paid for our first vacation. I married him because I fell in love with him.” The love story came first. The billions came after.
Owning an NBA Team and Being Very Good at It
In 2015, Jami and Tony joined a group that purchased the Atlanta Hawks NBA franchise for approximately seven hundred and twenty million dollars. The moment the deal was finalized reportedly involved jumping and screaming in a closet where Tony had been negotiating. Jami recalled looking at him, both of them terrified and thrilled simultaneously, before committing.
She is not a passive owner. She has represented the Hawks at the NBA Draft Lottery in 2018, 2019, and 2020. She attends games regularly. She is visibly involved in the franchise’s public and charitable operations. The Hawks, under the Ressler ownership group, have undergone significant modernization in both organizational culture and arena experience.
The couple also hold a minority stake in the Milwaukee Brewers baseball franchise, making them part of the small group of people in American sports who own pieces of multiple professional teams across multiple leagues simultaneously.
The Production Company, the Oscar Nomination, and the Charitable Record
Did you know Jami Gertz’s production company helped generate an Oscar nomination? She founded Lime Orchard Productions in 2007. The company’s most significant project, A Better Life (2011), told the story of an undocumented immigrant gardener in East Los Angeles and earned its lead actor, Demián Bichir, a Best Actor nomination at the Academy Awards. Jami has acknowledged that the company was not a profitable business venture but that the film’s impact mattered more than the margins.
In 2010, The Giving Back Fund named Jami Gertz and Tony Ressler the top celebrity charitable donors in the United States. They have donated fifty million dollars to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Jami serves on the board of the Melanoma Research Alliance, the largest nonprofit funder dedicated to melanoma research and supports Camp Painted Turtle, which provides summer camp experiences to children living with serious medical conditions.
Social Media and Public Image Intentionally, Quietly Powerful
Jami Gertz has a social media presence that reflects exactly who she has always been: visible when she chooses to be, absent when she prefers to be. She does not maintain the kind of constantly updated, brand-driven digital persona that many celebrities in her wealth bracket cultivate. She appears at events, attends Hawks games courtside, shows up for charitable commitments, and otherwise keeps her family life genuinely private.
Her public image carries a specific kind of weight. She is recognized as one of the most significant philanthropists in the celebrity space, a sports executive who actually does the work, and an actress whose career, however it may have evolved, represents real longevity in one of the most disposable industries on earth.
She once told The Hollywood Reporter: “I get it. It’s not your everyday Hollywood actress tale.” That restraint, acknowledging the unusual nature of her story without turning it into a performance, is deeply consistent with everything else she has ever shown publicly.
She is sixty years old as of 2025. She is the richest celebrity on the planet. She grew up in a suburb of Chicago. Her father was a contractor. And she has never once acted like any of it was inevitable.
FAQs
Q1: Who is Jami Gertz?
Jami Gertz is an American actress, businesswoman, and philanthropist born on October 28, 1965, in Chicago, Illinois. She is best known for her 1980s film roles, particularly in The Lost Boys and Less Than Zero, her television work on Still Standing and Ally McBeal, and for being part of the ownership group of the Atlanta Hawks NBA franchise alongside her husband, billionaire investor Tony Ressler.
Q2: What is Jami Gertz’s net worth?
Her family net worth shared with husband Tony Ressler, is estimated at approximately twelve billion dollars, making her the richest celebrity in the world by most calculations. This figure surpasses the individual net worths of Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, and Oprah Winfrey. The majority of the wealth comes from Ressler’s private equity firms, Apollo Global Management and Ares Management, combined with sports franchise ownership and real estate.
Q3: Did Jami Gertz marry Tony Ressler for his money?
No and this is one of the most consistently misunderstood aspects of her story. When they met in 1986 and throughout the early years of their marriage, Jami was the primary earner. She paid for their first home and funded their early vacations. Tony was a financier whose career was disrupted when his employer, Drexel Burnham Lambert, collapsed. He built his billion-dollar empire after their marriage, starting with co-founding Apollo Global Management in 1990.
Q4: How was Jami Gertz discovered?
Television producer Norman Lear organized a nationwide talent search that identified her when she was sixteen years old. She was cast in the CBS sitcom Square Pegs, which launched alongside a young Sarah Jessica Parker. The show only lasted one season, but it opened the door to her film career.
Q5: What is Jami Gertz’s most famous movie role?
Her most enduring role is Star in The Lost Boys (1987), the Joel Schumacher-directed vampire film starring Kiefer Sutherland and Jason Patric. The film has maintained a devoted following for nearly four decades. Her role in Less Than Zero (1987), alongside Robert Downey Jr. is also frequently cited by critics and fans as some of her strongest dramatic work.
Q6: Did Jami Gertz really appear in Seinfeld?
Yes. In a 1994 episode called “The Stall,” she played Jane Jerry’s girlfriend, who refuses to share toilet paper with Elaine in a public restroom. The role has become one of the show’s most-referenced guest appearances.
Final Words
Jami Gertz’s story is one of those rare Hollywood journeys that stretches far beyond the screen. She started as a young actress discovered through a nationwide talent search, built a recognizable career in 1980s and 1990s films like The Lost Boys and Less Than Zero, and later transitioned into steady television work with shows such as Still Standing and memorable guest appearances on series like Seinfeld and Ally McBeal. While her acting career gave her early fame, her life eventually expanded into business, philanthropy, and sports ownership through her marriage to investor Tony Ressler.
Today, Jami Gertz is widely recognized not just as an actress but as part of one of the wealthiest families in the world, with an estimated combined net worth in the billions. Despite this status, she has maintained a grounded and private public image, focusing heavily on family life, charitable work, and her involvement with the Atlanta Hawks. Her journey stands out because it blends Hollywood success with long-term financial influence and philanthropy, while still keeping her personal life largely out of the spotlight.
