While Hollywood is full of “nepo babies,” some celebrity kids paved their own path without the financial help of their wealthy parents.
Madonna’s son David Banda raised eyebrows when he joked in July 2024 that he couldn’t afford food.
“It’s lovely to experience it being nine o’clock at night, me being hungry and realizing that I don’t have enough money to get food and scavenging,” Banda quipped via Instagram Live at the time. “It’s fun to be young.”
After stirring up confusion, Banda took to Instagram to clarify his remark. “To all of those concerned. My mother is very supportive of me,” he wrote. “She has always been supportive of me. I am very happy in my life and I am not living on the streets, starving! Please stop worrying everything is good.”
Banda isn’t the only celeb kid who’s had to rough it despite having fabulously wealthy, globally famous parents. Keep scrolling to see more kids who had to make ends meet:
David Banda
Banda made headlines in July 2024 for suggesting that he didn’t have enough money to afford food after moving out of his mom’s Upper East Side mansion to live with his girlfriend in the Bronx. The budding musician, 18 years old at the time, later clarified that Madonna was “very supportive.”
Dakota Johnson
Dakota’s dad, Don Johnson, cut her off financially when she decided to pursue acting over college.
“I did some little modeling jobs that helped me pay my rent,” Dakota (whose mom is Oscar nominee Melanie Griffith) said during a February 2024 appearance on Today. “And then I started auditioning and got some jobs. I definitely had moments where I couldn’t afford groceries and things like that and needed to ask my mom to help me.”
Gwyneth Paltrow
Paltrow clarified her previous financial status during an interview with Glamour in 2016, sharing that her parents, actress Blythe Danner and director Bruce Paltrow, told her she was on her own at an early age.
“People think, ‘She’s just a rich kid,’’ she told the outlet. “Until I was 18, I was. Then I was broke. I’ve never taken a dime off my parents. I’m completely self-made.”
Tori Spelling
Tori only inherited $800,000 of dad Aaron Spelling’s reported $500 million. “So her father was worth hundreds of millions of dollars, she inherited $800,000,” Jeff Lewis said in conversation with Tori and Lisa Vanderpump on “Overserved With Lisa Vanderpump” in 2021.
After Vanderpump suggested that Tori wouldn’t be as “kind, compassionate and hardworking” if she had inherited more money, Tori replied, “I think I always would have had that drive, I’m built like my dad. What if he had given me $50 million and what if with that $50 million I had changed the world? Like, what if I am a fierce hustler and businesswoman I am today, but with that.”
Tori has made headlines through the years for allegedly owing money. In 2016, Tori’s mom, Candy Spelling, claimed she was paying some of her daughter’s bills.
“I’ve been helping her out, I’m paying all her bills now,” she told TMZ. “I’m not paying any back payments, just for the house and the kids school and the food.”
Christina Crawford
Actress Joan Crawford’s adopted daughter, Christina, exposed her abusive childhood in her infamous 1978 book Mommie Dearest. When Joan died in 1977, Christina and her younger brother, Christopher Crawford, were cut out of the will. Joan said the decision was because of “reasons which are well known to them,” as she wrote in the book.
Sachi Parker
Oscar-winning actress Shirley MacLaine’s daughter, Sachi, claimed she was cut off financially at age 17, leading her to not be able to afford college.
“She doesn’t see the importance of it because she didn’t go [to college],” Parker told the Hartford Courant in 2013. “Neither did my father.”
