The Forbes Celebrity 100: The Richest and the Most Entrepreneurial

Note: This is the In Brief item I wrote for the June 6  issue of Forbes featuring the 100 top-earning celebrities and the rise of Hollywood’s entrepreneurial elite.

“Welcome to Hollywood. What’s your dream? Some dreams come true, some don’t. But keep on dreamin.’”
Those lyrical lines from “Pretty Woman,” the hit movie about a corporate raider and a hooker with a heart of gold, resonated with me back then and remain stuck in my brain to this day. I wasn’t after the Hollywood dream. Mine was the entrepreneur’s dream — to start a company.
Many of today’s fresh-faced celebrities have that dream, too. Some are living it. That’s why this year’s Celebrity 100 issue, our 13th annual ranking of the most powerful stars, focuses on the rise of Hollywood’s entrepreneurial elite.
My involvement with this FORBES list goes back to my first stint here. Forbes had long tracked the wealth of entertainers. I proposed to Tim Forbes that we add athletes, authors and all the “models, actresses, whatevers” to a new list. The Celebrity 100 was born.
The first cover, back in 1999, featured the unlikely pairing of Jerry Seinfeld, who was raking in syndication money, and Puff Daddy (now Diddy, but first Sean Combs), whose business acumen perhaps led the way for Jay-Z (“I’m a Business, Man”), who last fall appeared with Warren Buffett on the cover of the FORBES 400 issue of the richest Americans.
Our Celebrity 100 Power Ranking is based on an algorithm that includes earnings, press clippings, magazine covers and TV/Radio mentions. In a world of social media, we’ve added Twitter followers and Facebook fans to the mix.
Bethenny Frankel is truly a member of Hollywood’s entrepreneurial elite. She’s turned her Reality TV fame into a big business with the recent sale of her Skinnygirl drinks to Fortune Brands for $100 million. Her ultimate goal? Billionaire stardom, of course. For now, she debuts at No. 43 on our list.
“What’s the point of being on TV,” asks Frankel, “if you don’t have something to sell?” Now that’s a line likely to set off a flurry of celebrity phone calls, emails and Twitter messages to agents, managers and attorneys across the entertainment universe.
A Celebrity 100 issue like this needs a party. So, we’re having one — with awards, too. On June 8 in Los Angeles, FORBES will host the Entrepreneur Behind the Icon event.
So, “what’s your dream?”