How Mike Myers Achieved a Net Worth of $175 Million
The always hilarious Mike Meyers hasn’t been in very many films or shows lately. While we miss his comic stylings, we can certainly understand that he’s semi-retired. You would be too if you had a hundred and seventy-five million dollars. It’s not as though he needs to work these days. In the course of his prolific and outstanding career, Mike made twenty-five films and was on at least sixteen different shows, including multiple appearances on Saturday Night Live. This fantastic funnyman has brought laughs to generations of adults and occasionally their children as well. Here’s how Mike Meyers achieved a net worth of $175 Million.
Origin Story
Mike Meyers was born on May 25, 1963, in Scarboro (now Toronto) Canada. Though he’s a resident of New York these days, the world traveling ‘man of mystery’ holds a somewhat rare triple citizenship as an American, Canadian, and Englishman. In addition to his acting and comedy, Mike is a director, screenwriter, and producer on multiple productions.
Before he was internationally famous, Mike was just a funny kid who’s parents were an insurance agent and a veteran of the Royal Air Force. He has two older brothers, Peter and Paul, and they grew up together in the suburbs. However, performing was always a part of Meyer’s life. He started acting at the age of just two years old.
By the age of ten, he’d landed a commercial deal working with Gilda Radner on a British Columbia Hydro advertisement. Later at twelve, he appeared on the TV show King of Kensington as Ari. It seems Mike, and his family always knew he was meant for the spotlight, and they were right.
After Highschool Mike joined the Second City Canadian touring company for a while before moving to the UK in the ’80s. Once there, he became a founding member of The Comedy Store Players in 1985. The improv troupe is based out of The Comedy Store in London, and it has lasted over thirty years now. That’s a heck of a legacy on its own, but Meyers didn’t stop there. Improv was just a stop on his road to success, albeit an important one.
In the ’80s
During the early part of the 1980s, Mike Meyers, often in the guise of the now-famous Wayne Campbell (from Wayne’s World), made appearances in several venues. Developing that rock and roll loving suburbanite character was a massive part of what led to his eventual success. Wayne appeared on Citytv in Toronto as part of an alternative show hosted by Christopher Ward called City Limits. He reprised the character again in Wards’ later (Canadian) hit music video Boys and Girls.
In 1986 CBC featured his Wayne character repeatedly in a show from Toronto’s Insight Production Company called It’s Only Rock and Roll. Around that time, he wrote a sketch called Curt and Deiter, which he performed with Second City’s Dana Andersen. That sketch would eventually become the beloved “Sprockets” on Saturday Night Live.
It’s Wayne’s World
Along with fellow SNL star Dana Carvey, Mike Meyers released the first Wayne’s World movie in 1992. Dana played Wayne’s best friend Garth, a character almost as well recognized and beloved as Wayne himself. (Schwing!) Everyone we knew at the time went and saw it in theaters. The film was one of the most successful that year and was quickly followed by Wayne’s World 2 the next year. The first Waynes World film grossed over a hundred and eighty-three million dollars, which doubtless contributed substantially to Meyer’s wealth.
Wayne and of course, Mike were well along the path to their current superstar status; after all, they were already on SNL. Again, some actors would have let things go at that. Mike was a 90’s icon who’d already amassed a fair sum from his performing career. Instead, he starred in So I Married an Axe Murderer the same year. Sadly, all great things come to an end, and it was not long after that Meyers (first) stint on SNL ended. He did take a couple of years off at that point, but realistically he’d been on stage and screen for thirty years. He was due for an extended vacation.
From Superspy to Shrek
In 1997 Meyers came back stronger than ever as the star of Austin Powers International Man of Mystery, a film which grossed over fifty-five million dollars on its opening weekend. Playing the silly superspy was arguably his best role, but decidedly contributed a considerable sum to Mikes’personal wealth. Reprising the character again in 1999 and 2002 for The Spy Who Shagged Me and Goldmember turned another of Mike’s characters into an international icon. The velvet wearing groovy spoof of a spy was a comedians’ James Bond dream job. However, the younger generation might know him better from his time as a very different character and trilogy.
Shrek, the green ogre who married a princess, who is also an ogre, has been one of the most well-loved children’s franchises for many years. The big green swamp dweller isn’t the only character in the films played by alumni from SNL. Eddie Murphy voiced the sidekick Donkey, a talking donkey with many annoying habits, who was nevertheless a fantastic friend. Donkey ends up saving the day by forcing Shrek to confess his love in the first film, thus setting up the rest of the series and all its spinoffs about the Ogres and their eventual family.
By the time the third installment of Shrek came about, Mike was making $108,000 per minute as a voice actor. Moreover, the salary for the fourth Shrek movie was in the neighborhood of ten million apiece for the actors. That’s a substantial amount. However, more than his salary as an actor, Mike wrote and produced many of the films he’s starred in (not Shrek, but many others), which would net him even more than merely starring in the films.
Final Thoughts
If you’re still wondering where Mike made his money, we don’t know what to say. He created and owns some of film history’s most beloved comic characters. From the age of two, he’s been acting, and since graduating high school, he’s been writing, directing, and producing various skits and movies. Mike earned his money by being smart and talented., not to mention the fact that he has a strange ability to know precisely what will draw in an audience and keep them laughing. He may not work much these days, but we’re sure we haven’t heard the last of Mike Meyers.