David Schwimmer Net Worth

David Schwimmer has already had a long, successful career in television and films, both before the camera and behind it. David Schwimmer’s net worth has reached an impressive value of $120 million in a career that took off when he landed the role of Ross Geller in the outrageously popular sitcom Friends. However, since that time, he has shown himself to be an extremely versatile actor and a producer, director, and voice-over artist.

David Schwimmer’s early life

David Lawrence Schwimmer was born in 1966 on the 2nd of November in New York City. He was raised in a Jewish household with one older sister by parents who were both professional lawyers. It didn’t take long before the family decided to move to Los Angeles. After being situated there, young David became enamored with Shakespeare and developed a serious love of acting.

Academic Career

When the family relocated to Beverly Hills, David went to high school and excelled in math and science. However, he felt like an outsider during high school and decided to become a doctor. However, having been bitten once by the acting bug, David continued to enroll in summer acting programs and drama classes.

After graduating from high school, David attended Northwestern University and was one member of an improv group that included Stephen Colbert. Graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1988 in speech and theater, he then founded the Looking-Glass Theater in Chicago. Eventually, however, he decided it was in his best interest to return to Los Angeles to revive his acting career.

Early television career

Schwimmer earned regular work appearing in TV shows such as NYPD Blue, L.A. Law, The Wonder Years, and Monty. He also appeared in two movies early in his career: Flight of the Intruder and A Deadly Silence. His big breakthrough in the industry came in 1994 when he landed the role of Ross Geller in the television sitcom Friends. Right from the very first episode, the show was a massive hit, being viewed by more than 22 million Americans. It rapidly developed into one of the most popular television shows.

This led directly to some movie roles such as Apt Pupil, Picking Up The Pieces, 6 Days and 7 Nights, Kissing a Fool, and The Pallbearer. He also landed another major role in the World War II mini-series Band of Brothers, where Schwimmer played Captain Sobel, who was a much-disliked and neurotic officer in the US Army. In 2005, he landed the role of Melman the Giraffe in the series of animated films entitled Madagascar.

Later career

Moving into the later part of his career, David Schwimmer began to direct movies such as Run Fatboy Run, and then, for the first time, he appeared on Broadway in The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial. Meanwhile, he made several television appearances in shows such as 30 Rock, Entourage, and Curb Your Enthusiasm.

In 2011, he returned to television again after a long time away, appearing as a special guest in the British comedy Come Fly with Me. He played Robert Kardashian in 2016 during the first season of American Crime Story, which featured a summary of the O.J. Simpson trial. He also appeared in television series such as Homecoming, Intelligence, and Feed The Beast.

David Schwimmer’s personal life

In the year 2010, David Schwimmer got married to Zoe Buckman, and the year after that, they had a child together. They ran into marital difficulties over the next several years and decided to take time apart from each other to see if it would improve their relationship. As it turned out, the relationship was not helped by the time they took off, so in 2017 the couple decided to get divorced.

How David Schwimmer got rich

During that first season of Friends, each cast member received $22,500 per episode, which means for the entire season’s worth of shows, they earned $540,000. In the second season, cast members increased to $40,000 per episode, earning $960,000 for the year. Then Matthew Perry, Lisa Kudrow, Jennifer Aniston, and Courtney Cox decided to band together as a group to negotiate for higher salaries and eventually settled at $75,000 per episode, or $1.875 million a year.

Each cast member signed a contract that specified that their salaries would increase each year while the show was being filmed. Eventually, each one of them earned $125,000 per episode and $3.15 million annually. For seasons seven and eight, the group banded together again to renegotiate their contracts and successfully got significant increases up to $750,000 per episode, amounting to $18 million for the season.

As did all the other cast members, David Schwimmer earned roughly $90 million in salary just from this one television show. That doesn’t include any of the royalties or back-end bonuses that eventually became involved.

Back-end royalties

Although David Schwimmer continues to remain active in television and films, he doesn’t have to since he has long since become financially comfortable. He and the other cast members from Friends had the foresight to insist on language in their contracts that allowed them to be paid royalties when the show went into syndication. The show has been in syndication almost since it left the airwaves, and Schwimmer still earns between $10 and $20 million per year just from royalties and back-end bonuses still being earned by the show.

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