What Is Edward Norton's Net Worth?
Edward Norton is an American actor and producer who has a net worth of $300 million. Edward Norton's breakthrough role came in 1996 when he starred in "Primal Fear." It was his very first film role, and the part earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. He went on to star in several critically acclaimed films throughout the 1990s and 2000s, including "American History X," "Fight Club," and "The Illusionist." Norton has also had success as a writer and director, earning critical acclaim for his work on the films "Keeping the Faith" and "Motherless Brooklyn." Ed's biggest movies by worldwide box office include "The Incredible Hulk" (2008), which grossed over $263 million worldwide, and "The Bourne Legacy" (2012), which grossed over $276 million worldwide.
Norton has been nominated for three Academy Awards. He has also been nominated for several other major awards, including Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild Awards.
Edward Norton has actually earned far more money as an entrepreneur/investor than he has as an actor. He has made a number of extremely wise (and early) technology investments that have gone on to be worth hundreds of millions and even billions of dollars. For example, Edward was a very early investor in Uber and was reportedly the very first person other than Uber employees and employee family members to take an Uber. More details on these investments will be provided later in this article.
Early Life
Edward Harrison Norton was born on August 18, 1969, in Boston, Massachusetts. His father, Edward Mower Norton Jr., is a former Marine lieutenant who later became an environmental lawyer and federal prosecutor, and his mother, Lydia Robinson "Robin" Rouse, was an English teacher. Ed and his two younger siblings were raised in Columbia, Maryland. His maternal grandfather was James Rouse, founder of The Rouse Company and co-founder of the real estate developer Enterprise Community Partners. Since being founded in 1982, Enterprise has spent tens of billions of dollars developing tens of thousands of homes and developments in and around Maryland. James Rouse actually pioneered the concept of the suburban enclosed shopping mall.
Norton graduated from Wilde Lake High School in 1987 and continued his education at Yale University. At college, he studied history and Japanese. Immediately following graduation in 1991, he worked as a representative for his grandfather's company in Osaka, Japan, for five months. Ed then moved to New York City, where he worked a series of odd jobs while trying to pursue an acting career.
Career
Norton landed a series of jobs in theater and wrote scripts for plays at the Signature Theatre Company. He performed in a production of Brian Friel's "Lovers" and was also a member of the cast for the world premiere of playwright Edward Albee's "Fragments."
In 1995, after being discovered by a casting agent, Norton landed his first film role in the film "Primal Fear" (1996). He ended up earning nominations from the Academy Awards and Golden Globes for that role.
In 1996, Ed also starred in two other films, Woody Allen's "Everyone Says I Love You" and Milos Forman's controversial film "The People vs. Larry Flynt." In 1998, he starred with Matt Damon in the film "Rounders," but in general, both the film and his performance failed to impress. He redeemed himself later that year in "American History X" and actually earned his second-ever Oscar nomination for his role.
Norton's career really hit new levels in 1999 when he teamed up with Brad Pitt in "Fight Club," a role he prepared for by taking boxing, taekwondo, and grappling lessons. For his role in "Fight Club," Ed was widely praised, and he even was nominated for Best Actor by the Online Film Critics Society.
Ed went on to star in and/or produce such films as the romantic comedy "Keeping the Faith" (2000), which he also directed in his directorial debut, the heist film "The Score" (2001), "Death to Smoochy" (2002), the biopic "Frida" (2002), the horror film "Red Dragon" (2002), "The 25th Hour" (2002), a film about New York City post-9/11, "The Italian Job" (2003), which was a film Paramount Pictures forced Norton to appear in after threatening to sue him for violation of a three-film contract with the studio he had signed, "Kingdom of Heaven" (2005), an epic historical film in which he played Baldwin IV, the leper king of Jerusalem, "Down in the Valley" (2005), a neo-western film in which he played a delusional man, "The Painted Veil" (2006), in which he plays bacteriologist Walter Fane, "The Illusionist" (2006), in which he plays Eisenheim the magician, Marvel's "The Incredible Hulk" (2008), in which he portrays Bruce Banner and his alter ago the Hulk, "Pride and Glory" (2008), a crime drama that was criticized for an overly cliched plot, and the 2007 documentaries "Brando" and "Man from Plains."
(Photo by Mark Davis/Getty Images)
After 2010, Norton's first big starring role was in Wes Anderson's coming-of-age film "Moonrise Kingdom" (2012). The film was highly acclaimed and was well-received by audiences, grossing over $68 million. His second lead role in 2012 was in the action thriller "The Bourne Legacy," portraying retired Air Force colonel Eric Byer. Although "The Bourne Legacy," the fourth film in the "Bourne" series, received only average reviews from critics, it ended up being Ed's highest-grossing film at that point in his career, grossing over $276 million globally. He also has his own production company, Class 5 Films, under which he produced the comedy-drama "Thanks for Sharing" (2012).
The year 2014 was a highly successful year for Norton. He starred in not one but two different Academy Award-winning films: "The Grand Budapest Hotel" and "Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)." "The Grand Budapest Hotel" was directed by Wes Anderson and won four Academy Awards. "Birdman" won the Academy Award for Best Picture and earned Norton a nomination for Best Supporting Actor. He then directed, wrote, and produced the crime film "Motherless Brooklyn" (2019).
In addition to his acting efforts onstage, Norton has engaged in several voice acting projects, including the animated feature "Sausage Party" (2016), the English dubbed version of the Chinese film "Little Door Gods" (2017), and when he reunited again with Wes Anderson on the stop-motion film "Isle of Dogs" in 2018.
Technology Investments
Edward Norton has, somewhat secretly, developed into an extremely savvy technology investor. He was a very early investor in Uber, and was actually the first person, other than Uber founder Travis Kalanick's parents, to take an Uber in Los Angeles.
Ed also funded analytics companies Kensho and EDO. Norton was the largest individual equity owner in Kensho when it sold to S&P Global for $550 million in 2018. He co-founded the crowdfunding platform CrowdRise, which was acquired by GoFundMe in 2017.
Personal Life
In the 1990s, Norton was romantically linked to Salma Hayek and Courtney Love. He later began dating Canadian film producer Shauna Robertson and proposed to her in 2011. They married in 2012 and welcomed a son together in 2013.
