Celebrity credit crunch: How the rich and famous have been hit by the recession (2024)

By Alison Boshoff for the Daily Mail
Created: 22:23, 12 April 2009

Times are tough, even for the gilded few. Actor Nicolas Cage is down to his last castle.

And Simon Cowell has just announced that times are so tough he is taking a £4million pay cut on his £20million ITV contract.

Coleen Rooney, meanwhile, has told of her determination to carry on shopping to help the nation's retail industry - even though Wayne has just lost his £1million contract with Mercedes.

The truth is, however, that one or two of the A-list really are, by their standards, feeling the pinch. Here, the casualties are examined...

Gordon Ramsay

He advises struggling restaurateurs in Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares, but now Gordon has his very own nightmare.

He has sold his restaurants in Los Angeles, Paris and Prague back to the hotels which housed them.

Although Ramsay is worth £60million on paper, his restaurant business has been hit by the credit crunch and is said to be debt-ridden and overstretched.

Gordon Ramsay Holdings (GRH) - the umbrella firm for his 25 restaurants - has been taken to court over unpaid debts three times in a month.

Its latest accounts - which cover the year to August 31, 2007 - were posted eight months late and reveal that the company's overdraft was renegotiated from £4.5million to £6.1million.

Suppliers are owed almost £5million, and the company also owes £1.7million in corporation tax.

Ramsay and Chris Hutcheson, the GRH chief executive who is also the celebrity chef's father-in-law, have had to make personal pledges to help the company pay its debts if necessary.

Ramsay is selling his Ferrari Scuderia at a £50,000 loss. The chef, who has owned the car for six months, has a Range Rover and an Audi for everyday use, but the Ferrari was his pride and joy.

Sharon Stone

The film star moved from San Francisco in 2006 after her divorce from newspaper editor Phil Bronstein.

She bought a five-bedroom, Mediterranean-style property in a gated estate in Beverly Hills for £5million.

It has a tennis court, a gym and five acres.

But - for whatever reason - it doesn't seem to be to Sharon's taste.

She put it back on the market in September 2006 for £5.7million.

But as the market wobbled, she could not sell it, even when she dropped the asking price to £4.6million.

It has now been rented out for £24,000 a month.

x

Antony Worrall Thompson

When Antony Worrall Thompson pulled the plug on his restaurant empire in February, he painted himself as just another hapless victim of greedy bankers.

He said Lloyds had asked him to put his family home up as security on a loan, or forfeit his six restaurants and throw 100 staff out of work.

An administrator's report into the business, however, claimed that bad management was to blame.

It said AWT Restaurants was too slow to react to the downturn and was also overstretched. By January 2009, it had too little cash and too large an overdraft to pay creditors.

Leonardo DiCaprio

The Titanic star has had a spot of bother with his ocean-front property in California.

The contemporary design home in Malibu was bought for £4.3million two years ago. Leo put it back on the market for £6 million, had to reduced it to £5.3million, but still there has been no interest.

It's now on the rental market for £17,000 a month.

But don't cry for Leo. He has two other oceanfront beach houses in the Los Angeles area, plus a primary residence on Sunset Strip, which he bought from Madonna, and he owns the house next door, too.

Oh, and he also has a condo in New York.

Jade Jagger

The jewellery designer and daughter of Sir Mick has run into a spot of bother with property.

For nearly a year she has been wanting to trade up from her three-bedroom house in Queen's Park, North-West London, but has had no buyers at the £1.75million asking price, and has had to slash £250,000 off it. It remains unsold.

The Osbournes

Ozzy and Sharon have lost £2million on their Malibu beach house.

The five-bedroom property went on the market in March 2006 for £9.5million.

But as the U.S. property market soured, they were unable to offload it.

They chopped the price to £7.5million, but have now put it up for long-term let for £17,000 a month.

The couple also have a mansion in Buckinghamshire, and another in Hidden Hills, in the San Fernando Valley, California, which has six bedrooms and cost the couple £6.8million.

Nicolas Cage

The star of Leaving Las Vegas has sold his Bavarian castle, Schloss Neidstein.

'Due to the difficult economic situation, unfortunately, I was no longer able to keep it,' he said.

Cage bought the 28-room castle, which sits in the midst of 395 acres of forest, in 2006 for £1.6million because his mother, Joy, was from Bavaria (his father, August, is the brother of director Francis Ford Coppola). He has one castle left, however - Midford Castle, near Bath.

Cage is said to have spent 'millions' renovating the castle. But he was seen visiting it only once, and has now sold it to his lawyer for £100,000 less than he paid for it.

The actor, who earns around £10million a movie,owned 14 homes at the last count.

There are other signs of a pinch, though. His mansion in Bel Air has been on and off the market for a while.

The price started at a stratospheric £23million, but has been reduced to £12.9million.

Cage is also said to be keen to sell one of this three homes in New Orleans, and his private estate in the Bahamas, too.

Anthea Turner and Grant Bovey

The television presenter and her husband have lost up to £100million of their fortune, thanks to Grant's adventures in the property industry.

His company, Imagine Homes, went into administration last year, and the couple are apparently considering selling their Alpine chalet in Megeve, France.

Anthea is determined to hang on to their £5million home in Surrey, which may explain why they are appearing on Hell's Kitchen, which starts tonight, for which they will collect a £100,000 fee.

'Grant is in the investment side of the property business and this is the coalface of the credit crunch - it got hit first,' Anthea says. 'It really has been awful. 'Absolutely, we have looked at cutting back.'

Griff Rhys Jones

Comedian Griff has lost what he calls 'a big sum of money' in the banking crash.

The cash evaporated with the collapse of Lehman Brothers last September. 'I am just a standard freelance money-earner with a moderately successful career,' he said last week.

'I distrust all wealth management and fund manager types. But I happen to have savings and pension funds to consider.

'I was hardly aware that I had anything deposited with this distinguished banking house - or hopelessly greedy incompetents, depending on the way you choose to look at them - until I telephoned the manager of my account at a hedge fund,' he said.

The hedge fund suggested he contact a firm of liquidators. If he ever manages to get any of his investment back, he believes it will be years before it materialises.

Gary Lineker

The football pundit and Walkers crisps man, who is worth around £30million, was very keen to move his new fiancée, Danielle Bux, into a £2.6million mansion last year.

But first he had to take a hit on the value of his bachelor pad, just around the corner, in Surrey.

He had paid £2.1million for his three-bedroom flat in January 2007, after his split from former wife Michelle, and is thought to have sold it for £1.9million two years later.

All very painful, but don't feel too sorry for the Match Of the Day host - the full asking price of his new home was paid in cash.

P Diddy

Sean 'P Diddy' Combs says that, even though he is worth £200million, he cannot afford to run his private jet any more - and has been reduced to slumming it in first-class on commercial airlines.

'Gas prices are too motherf*****g high,' the rap star ranted in a video, shot by a member of his entourage. 'As you know, I do have my own jet, but I've been having to fly back and forth to LA pursuing my acting career.

'Now, if I'm flying twice a month, that's like a $200,000 or $250,000 round trip. I'm back on American Airlines.'

He added: 'Give a shout out to all my Saudi Arabia brothers and sisters - if you could please send me some oil for my jet, I would truly appreciate it.'