[imagesource: John Russo]

Ask your average punter who the world’s richest actress is, and you’ll probably hear names like Julia Roberts, or Jennifer Aniston, or the Olsen twins.

They feature atop lists like this one, but there may well be an update coming.

News broke yesterday that a Blackstone-backed media company is purchasing a majority stake in Reece Witherspoon’s production company, Hello Sunshine.

According to Forbes, that sale means Witherspoon is now worth a cool $400 million, making her the world’s richest actress:

The deal values Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine, which was founded in 2016 to tell women-driven stories, at $900 million, thanks to its track record of hits like Big Little Lies, The Morning Show and Little Fires Everywhere, and a promising pipeline of adaptations of popular books…

Witherspoon will retain an ownership stake of at least 18% and will collect an estimated $120 million, after taxes, from the sale of about half of her preexisting roughly 40% stake in the company.

The rest of her fortune  is tied to her (after tax) earnings from her 30-year-long career as a successful actress and producer. Witherspoon is one of Hollywood’s most bankable stars, and can command sky-high pay.

The actress earns upwards of $1 million per episode for her TV work, commands huge fees for film roles, and also endorses a range of products and companies.

Her media empire now also includes Reese’s Book Club, which has more than two million followers.

The book club can instantly send a recommendation on its way to the New York Times Best Sellers list, with 42 of the 50 picks so far making that list.

Witherspoon founded Pacific Standard in 2012, which then morphed into Hello Sunshine in 2016. The production company has a number of high profile releases on the way, including a film adaptation of the best-selling novel Where the Crawdads Sing.

By the way, I Googled around and here’s a site that helps you calculate your own net worth.

Good luck stacking up against Reece.

[source:forbes]