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How Cote De Pablo Achieved a Net Worth of $6 Million

Cote De Pablo is a Chilean-American actress. Generally speaking, interested individuals know her because of her role as Ziva David on NCIS. However, De Pablo has taken on a wide range of other roles in a wide range of other projects ever since her career started up in the mid 1990s. A celebrity's exact net worth tends to be unknown to the members of the public. After all, that is private information, meaning that most people keep it to themselves. However, so long as there is sufficient interest, there will be various parties looking to come up with estimates of said figure. For instance, Celebrity Net Worth estimates that De Pablo has a current net worth of $6 million.

How Did Cote De Pablo Reach Her Current Net Worth?

De Pablo was born in Santiago de Chile. For those who are unfamiliar, Santiago is a Spanish evolution of the Latin sancti Iacobi, which means "sanctuary of James" in reference to St. James the Great. Said figure is the patron saint of Spain. Thanks to this, there are numerous places in the Spanish-influenced world named Santiago. For instance, there are five notable cities that bear the name, which makes the "de Chile" very useful in the absence of additional context. In any case, Santiago de Chile has been the capital of the region ever since colonial times. Furthermore, it remains a cultural, financial, and political center in the present time.

Having said this, De Pablo moved to the United States when she was still the age of 10. This happened because her mother got a job at a Spanish-language TV network in Miami, FL, with the result that she went along. There, De Pablo started telling people to call her Cote, which is a common Chilean nickname for her name Maria Jose. Regardless, it is interesting to note that De Pablo started showing an interest in the arts at a young age. For example, she went to an arts-oriented high school. Similarly, she studied musical theatre. As a result, it is perhaps unsurprising to learn that De Pablo went on to graduate from Carnegie Mellon University with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Musical Theatre.

Simultaneously, De Pablo became involved with the entertainment industry at a young age. For instance, she is known to have hosted some episodes of the show Control alongside industry veteran Carlos Ponce on Univision when she was still at the age of 15. However, De Pablo stepped up her efforts upon graduation, as shown by her move to New York City, which is one of the entertainment capitals of the United States. There, she worked at both an Indian restaurant and an Italian bakery to support herself. In the meantime, De Pablo also started building up her resume with minor roles. For example, there was a CBS drama called The Education of Max Bickford. Similarly, there was the ABC soap opera called All My Children. On top of this, De Pablo was also putting on performances in New York City's live theatre scene.

In 2005, De Pablo had her big breakthrough moment, though it was tenser than that makes it sound. For starters, she was set to have her Broadway debut as Dolores Fuentes on The Mambo Kings. However, that winded up falling through because the show closed after a short trial run in San Francisco. Fortunately for her, she was called in to do a screen test for the role of Ziva David on NCIS just two days after The Mambo Kings had closed, which turned out to be very lucky for her. As the story goes, Michael Weatherly went off-script to say that she reminded him of Salma Hayek. To this, De Pablo just dismissed him, which was very much what the people behind the show expected from the character. As such, the producer met with her to tell her that she had landed the part just as she was waiting for a cab to take her to the airport.

De Pablo was a member of the main cast for NCIS from 2005 to 2013, which was quite a run by any reasonable standard of judgment. In 2013, she left the show for undisclosed reasons, though she stated at the time that the character could still make a return at some point in the future because she wasn't dead. This was contradicted by the announcement of the character's death in the Season 13 finale. However, De Pablo's statement proved to have been correct because she returned to the show as a recurring character in Season 17, which was possible because it turned out that being reported dead is often not the same as being actually dead in fiction.

Besides NCIS, De Pablo has been involved with other projects. For example, she was in a movie called The 33, which covered the story of the Chilean miners who were trapped because of a cave-in at a copper-gold mine in said country. Similarly, she was in a movie called Prototype as well as a miniseries called The Dovekeepers. De Pablo and Michael Weatherly also worked together as producers of a CBS detective show called MIA, though not much seems to have come from that. Besides this, she has done some singing as well, though she has been relatively limited in this regard. As such, De Pablo has songs on both the NCIS soundtrack and The 33 soundtrack, which are in addition to a couple of other songs elsewhere.

Further Considerations

Based on this, it seems safe to say that most of De Pablo's net worth has been built up through her career as a successful actress. In particular, NCIS is worth mentioning because that is the show that propelled her into the spotlight while also making her known to a sizable audience for years and years. For now, De Pablo's net worth is estimated to be $6 million. However, it is possible that said figure could see notable growth in the times to come depending on the trajectory of her continuing career.

Allen Lee

Written by Allen Lee

Allen Lee is a Toronto-based freelance writer who studied business in school but has since turned to other pursuits. He spends more time than is perhaps wise with his eyes fixed on a screen either reading history books, keeping up with international news, or playing the latest releases on the Steam platform, which serve as the subject matter for much of his writing output. Currently, Lee is practicing the smidgen of Chinese that he picked up while visiting the Chinese mainland in hopes of someday being able to read certain historical texts in their original language.

Read more posts by Allen Lee

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