10 Celebrities Who Died Broke — and Why

Marvin Gaye will be forever remembered in the annals of music history for such iconic hits as “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” and “What’s Going On”. However, a combination of two divorces, massive penalties when he neglected to pay his taxes and a massive cocaine addiction pretty much swallowed up all his earnings and then some. At one point he moved to Europe in an attempt to evade the IRS, and then filed for bankruptcy and reportedly lived in a van in Hawaii. When he died in 1984 — shot and killed by his own father during a drug-fuelled argument — Gaye was reportedly more than $9 million in debt. RELATED: 10 celebrities who went bankrupt and what they did wrong.

Originally born Frances Ethel Gumm, Judy Garland grew up in Grand Rapids, Minnesota. With parents who were both performers, she entered the entertainment business at a young age. Garland started out as a singer in a group with her two older sisters, but later took up acting. Garland starred in a number of films and musicals, but she’s perhaps best known for playing Dorothy in the The Wizard of Oz. She had a successful career, but much of it was plagued by drug problems and financial issues. The IRS reportedly repossessed her home and when she passed away in 1969 (allegedly from an accidental drug overdose), she had roughly $4 million in unpaid debts.

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Michael Jackson made a lot of money, but he also knew how to spend it. Shopping sprees, mansions and binges — remember when he burned his former friend Paul McCartney by scooping up The Beatles’ song catalogue from under his nose? — left him with the kind over overhead that would give most people an instant coronary. When he died of an accidental drug overdose in 2009, the King of Pop was in the midst of mounting a massive comeback tour meant to shore ups his failing finances, leaving him with debuts of a reported $500 million when he died. Interestingly enough, the late singer’s estate has been able to shrewdly capitalize on the dead singer’s fame, and has raked in a whopping $2 billion since he moonwalked into the great beyond.

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The story of Corey Haim is a sad cautionary tale about the perils of being a child actor who achieves massive stardom at a too-young age. Once he passed through puberty, the Toronto-born actor couldn’t find work, leading to unemployment, depression and an addiction to valium that led him to file for bankruptcy. When he died at age 38 — not from an overdose, but pneumonia — he was living in his mother’s Los Angeles apartment. She was forced to sell some of his personal belongings to a Hollywood memorabilia website in order to raise the money to pay for his funeral.

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Few entertainers were more ubiquitous during the 1960s and 1970s that Sammy Davis Jr., his fingers dripping with diamond rings the size off Volkswagens and a flashy lifestyle that anyone would envy. It wasn’t until his 1990 death from throat cancer, however, that the truth was revealed: Davis had been living beyond his means for years, and had racked up thousands of dollars in debt and a $5.2 million tax bill when he passed away.

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For Bela Lugosi, the iconic role of Dracula was both a blessing and a curse; while it brought him massive fame, it also left him typecast, with Hollywood casting agents only hiring him for vampire or mad scientist roles. As the roles dwindled, he turned to opium for solace, taking whatever awful roles he could in order to feed his addiction. When he died in 1956 at age 73, he left behind $1,900 in the bank and real estate worth about $1,000.

The youngest of the Brothers Gibb, Andy Gibb never quite achieved the level of fame as his siblings, The Bee Gees, but did manage to rack up a string of hits in the 1970s that propelled him to stardom. Unfortunately, he also developed a huge addiction to cocaine, at one point reportedly snorting $1,000 up his nose every day. When he died at age 30 in 1988 from heart issues brought upon by his drug use, he was millions of dollars in debt.

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Widely regarded as one of the all-time great jazz singers, Billie Holiday’s life was beset by personal tragedy, which led her to turn to drugs and alcohol. Her often-hazy state allowed managers and promoters to rip her off, swindling her out of much of what she earned. When Holliday died from cirrhosis of the liver in 1959, she only had $750 to her name.

Omar Sharif was big in Hollywood for a time. The star of such classics as Laurence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago was also a high-stakes gambler, frequently throwing his money around at the casinos of Monaco. He was also regarded as one of the world’s best Bridge players, ultimately quitting acting in order to focus on Bridge. Things hit a downward spiral when he reportedly lost nearly $1 million in a single night while playing Roulette, leaving him to vow that he would never play again. The late-in-life event forced him to sell his home, and he spent the remainder of his days living in hotels. In a particularly sad interview toward the end of his life, Sharif described himself as "all alone and completely broke…I don’t own anything at all apart from a few clothes.” He died in 2015.

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Best known for her role as Joanie “Shortcake” Cunningham on hit 1970s sitcom Happy Days, Erin Moran was seemingly on her way to make a successful transition from child star to adult actor when she and co-star Scott Baio left the show to spin off their characters in a new show, Joanie Loves Chachi. One problem: that show was bad — legendarily bad, and she never really recovered from its cancellation. She spent the ensuring years in a downward spiral of drugs and alcohol, with a bank foreclosing on her California home in 2010. She spent her final days years living in an Indiana trailer park until her death from cancer in 2017.

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