Hollywood stars who found themselves on the brink of bankruptcy including Pamela Anderson

The famously eccentric star lost his £112 million fortune after living large for decades. Some of Nicolas' strange purchases include an ultra-rare Superman comic, a meteorite from Mars, two albino king cobras, a two-headed snake, an octopus, a fleet of exotic cars and motorcycles, a private jet, and a a 67-million-year-old dinosaur skull from the Gobi Desert, which he bought for £207,000 ($276,000) and was later forced to return. 

He also had a thing for weird and wonderful properties, including the £2.65 million LaLaurie Mansion in New Orleans known for its horrific history and supernatural occurrences. He also reportedly bought a private island for £1.7 million, and a castle in England for £7.5 million.

Nicolas' extensive property portfolio came with an even bigger property tax bill, totalling a reported £4.7 million. "I was over-invested in real estate. The real estate market crashed, and I couldn’t get out in time," he told 60 Minutes. "I paid them all back, but it was about $6 million. I never filed for bankruptcy."

He later explained to GQ that the Global Financial Crisis left him with property he couldn't get rid of. "I didn’t believe in stocks because I think they're like gambling and they’re dangerous, but you can dump a stock," he said. "You can't get out of real estate that quickly."

Nicolas was able to pay off his debts by taking any film role that came his way, particularly straight-to-DVD movies. "When I was doing four movies a year, back to back to back, I still had to find something in them to be able to give it my all," he told GQ.

"They didn’t work, all of them. Some of them were terrific, like Mandy, but some of them didn’t work. But I never phoned it in. So if there was a misconception, it was that. That I was just doing it and not caring. I was caring." Nicolas is now debt-free and has a reported net worth of £22.4 million.

The legendary actor was earning roughly £7.5 million a year at his career peak, before it all came crashing down in the '90s. He was the proud owner of several lavish properties, including Valhalla – his 3.4-acre estate in Florida – as well as mansions in Beverly Hills and Malibu, an estate in Georgia and a retreat in North Carolina. Burt also bought a private jet, a helicopter, several custom-made cars, 150 horses and £75,000 worth of toupees with his seemingly endless funds.

The Boogie Nights star then made a string of bad investments, including putting a massive £15 million ($20 million) into the regional restaurant chain Po' Folks. The chain quickly folded, and he liquidated those assets to redirect his money into a different chain, named Daisy's Diner, which also flopped, costing him the entire investment.

Burt lost out after buying a stake in the Tampa Bay Bandits, a team that played in the United States Football League, which folded shortly thereafter. He also sunk money into an Atlanta nightclub called Burt's Place, which closed within a year of opening.

Burt also claimed that his ex-wife, Loni Anderson, flippantly spent his money while they were together, and cost him millions in their divorce. He filed for bankruptcy in 1996 after being sued by CBS for failure to repay a £2.7 million debt, and worked hard for decades to get out of the red.

He auctioned off his personal possessions, including his 1998 Golden Globe Award, in 2014, and made a tidy £1.8 million back. Burt shared with Vanity Fair that he had learned some hard lessons about money since going bankrupt in the '90s.

"I’ve lost more money than is possible because I just haven’t watched it,” he explained. “I’ve still done well in terms of owning property and things like that. But I haven’t been somebody who’s been smart about his money. There are a couple of actors who are quite brilliant with the way they’ve handled their money. But they’re not very good actors."

The rapper made it big in the '00s with hits like 'Buy U a Drank', and racked up an impressive net worth of £30 million. When T-Pain handed the reins of his money to his manager, who had a penchant for buying properties riddled with issues, his funds began to dwindle.

"[We] just started going crazy with the money," he said on the Breakfast Club show. "I wasn't paying attention to it. I thought if I didn't have access to my own accounts I wouldn't have to look at it, so it was bad business choices."

"It was a lot of bad investments," the star continued. "Real estate. I was letting my manager do it. He was way more optimistic than I was. He would just buy complete dumps and think that we can just paint and then we should be fine. Never sold anything that we bought."

Things took a turn for the worse when T-Pain bought a Bugatti and had to return it days later after discovering he had no money left in the bank, and narrowly avoided losing his house in Atlanta. "I had to borrow money to get my kids Burger King," he said on the show.

The experience taught him to keep a closer eye on his money and to focus on providing for his wife and three kids above all else. "Now I know what the high end is and what the low end is," T-Pain said. "I've been mega-rich, I've been super broke, right in the middle of thinking I was mega-rich, and then got rich again, and learned how to really give a s*** about money."

The musician was able to clear his debts when he sold his music catalogue to HarbourView Equity Partners in 2025 for "100 years worth of money".

Pamela Anderson was once one of the highest-paid actresses in Hollywood, and was raking in £225,000 per episode of Baywatch. Armed with a massive multi-million-pound net worth, the star began to buy up properties, but this failed to make her dividends.

A string of failed marriages also left her in the lurch. The IRS caught up with her in 2009, with an unpaid tax bill of £1.27 million, leaving her living in a trailer park as she tried to pay off her massive debt.

"Events occurred outside of my control which caused this temporary but embarrassing situation," she tweeted in 2010. "All my tax obligations will be resolved in the very near future."

“The reason I got behind was because I was in the middle of building my house and a few deals fell through in 2007,” she explained to Flaunt. “I had no idea my tax account had been used to pay a contractor who had gone three times over budget.”

Ryan White, who directed the documentary Pamela: A Love Story, shared insight into the actress's situation to Yahoo! Entertainment. "She was the most famous woman in the world on the most famous show in the world, and she doesn't have a nest egg from Baywatch to rely upon," he said.

"It's shocking for how famous she is and how much a part of American pop culture she's been for the last 30-something years that she had been in financial trouble that many times. It was really revealing and really humanising."

Thankfully, her net worth is on the rise again, after she sold her Malibu home for around £9 million and experienced a career renaissance with hits like The Last Showgirl and The Naked Gun.