Actor Leonardo DiCaprio has pledged $43 million (£30.4m) to the help conserve the Galápagos Islands in Ecuador. The money will go to Re:Wild, an organisation founded earlier this year by DiCaprio and a team of conservation specialists, the Galápagos National Park Directorate, Island Conservation, and local communities. The money will go towards restoring Floreana Island, which is home to 54 threatened species, as well as reintroduce 13 extinct species. It will also introduce a captive breeding programme to prevent the extinction of animals such as the pink iguana.
It's not the first time DiCaprio has put his money towards conservation and saving endangered species through his eponymous foundation. The Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation has awarded more than $80 million (£57.5m) in grants since 2010, funding more than 200 high-impact projects across 50 countries.
But what about the other A-listers who use their money for good? Click or scroll through to see a selection of celebrities who are choosing to give away their wealth.
Human rights lawyer Amal and actor husband George are enthusiastic charity-givers, and have even created their own foundation, the Clooney Foundation for Justice. The pair famously donated all the money Hello! magazine paid for their wedding pictures to a series of charitable organisations. In 2017, alongside tech companies Google and HP, Amal and George contributed towards a $3.25 million (£2.6m) donation to help put over 3,000 Syrian refugee children living in Lebanon through school.
Music legend Sir Elton John is one seriously generous star. Year after year he has featured on the Sunday Times Giving List, coming 11th in 2020 with donations of £23.3 million ($32m). The majority of his very generous giving goes to his charity, the Elton John AIDS Foundation, which he has in both the UK and US. The two foundations together have raised more than $385 million (£285m) over the past 25 years.
The Hollywood power couple have given millions over the course of their careers to help those less fortunate. Together the duo look after the Will and Jada Smith Family Foundation, offering donations to a wide variety of causes including more than $1 million (£718k) in grants for Jada’s alma mater, the Baltimore School for the Arts, and a reported $1 million (£718k) for the Make-A-Wish Foundation through the #FriendLikeMe challenge, ahead of the 2019 film Aladdin, in which Will Smith played the genie. The foundation’s most recent projects include an initiative to encourage young women into the film industry and delivering 500 meals to the homeless in New York in 2019.
Northern Irish golfer Rory McIlroy gave £1 million ($1.5m) to a local children’s cancer charity through his initiative The Rory Foundation in 2014, and he didn't stop there. In 2016 the sporting star hosted the Dubai Duty Free Irish Open on behalf of his foundation, raising more than €500,000 ($544k/£389k) for three children’s charities. He then went on to win the championship and committed the entirety of his €666,000 ($724k/£518k) winnings to charity. McIlroy also pledged £250,000 ($349k) to Mencap Northern Ireland in 2015 to help build new facilities in Belfast for children with learning disabilities. The Rory Foundation officially closed in December 2018, and it has been reported that McIlroy is now pursuing his philanthropic interests more privately.
She might be known for her diva antics, but away from the paparazzi supermodel Naomi Campbell is incredibly generous. Her Fashion For Relief campaign, which she founded in 2005, plays host to a live event each year and helps raise vital funds for humanitarian crises, including the Ebola outbreak, Hurricane Katrina and, more recently, the COVID-19 pandemic. Since its inception, Fashion for Relief has raised over $15 million (£10.8m) for causes across the world.
Music sensation Taylor Swift was just 22 when she was named the most generous star of 2012 after donating a whopping $4 million (£2.5m) to the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville, which allowed the creation of a Taylor Swift Education Center. Swift’s generosity has continued throughout her career and into the COVID-19 pandemic. In August last year, the singer hit the headlines for donating £23,000 ($30k) to an 18-year-old in the UK who couldn’t afford to go to university, and recently made a quiet donation of $50,000 (£36k) to the GoFundMe campaign of a Tennessee mother of five who lost her husband to coronavirus just before Christmas.
Former Desperate Housewives actor Eva Longoria donates to more than 40 different charities. The star has received dozens of awards for her charitable work within Hispanic communities, and she’s so passionate about her culture she started her own charity, the Eva Longoria Foundation, which aims to empower Latinas through education and entrepreneurship. So far, the organisation has given out more than $1.95 million (£1.4m) in loans to Latina entrepreneurs, and has offered STEM education or mentoring schemes to more than 3,700 people. Seeing the way in which COVID-19 disproportionately affected Latinos, Longoria also launched Momento Latino, a movement looking to improve the health, finances and education of those in the Latinx community.
Ellen DeGeneres’ imaginative charity efforts tend to go viral, such as when she posted a celebrity-packed selfie from the Oscars on Twitter in 2014 and Samsung donated a dollar to a cause of her choice each time it was retweeted. She split the $2.5 million (£1.5m) raised between a children's hospital and an animal charity. The comedian is also often spotted giving away huge donations on her daytime talk show, such as the $50,000 (£38k) she gave to a struggling military family in 2019 and the $1.6 million-worth (£1.3m) of college scholarships she gifted an entire senior class in 2017. During a remotely-filmed episode of her show last year, Ellen DeGeneres announced that she and her wife Portia de Rossi would be donating $1 million (£718k) to the All-In Challenge, which sought to raise $100 million (£72m) for non-profit organisations struggling during the coronavirus pandemic.
This British celebrity chef has spent a large portion of his career helping underprivileged young people, and his financial contributions to the cause made him the fourth most generous British celebrity in 2017, according to the Sunday Times Giving List. As well as donating millions of pounds, Oliver gave young adults struggling with substance abuse or alcohol problems a chance to learn the chef trade by giving them apprenticeships in his charity restaurant chain Fifteen. Sadly most of Oliver’s restaurant empire collapsed in 2019, taking his charitable efforts down with it, but his work continues – his latest campaign is to halve childhood obesity by 2030.
The former Beatle’s charitable contributions are vast, and he shares his reported $1.2 billion (£874m) fortune with a number of good causes, including PETA, The OneVoice Movement and Meat Free Monday. The exact amounts donated by McCartney aren’t typically publicised, but he’s been known to give his earnings from private concerts, which can stack up to millions per show, entirely to non-profit organisations.
The football star is thought to be worth a staggering $500 million (£364m), but he is known to be generous. Ronaldo is an ambassador to at least three charities – Save the Children, Unicef and World Vision – and he has also spent a lot of money on other people’s medical bills, including $165,000 (£117k) for a Portuguese cancer treatment centre in 2009 and $83,000 (£50k) to fund a 10-month-old’s brain surgery in 2014. Just this February, Ronaldo and his girlfriend Georgina Rodriguez gifted money to a seven-year-old Portuguese boy and his family to fund treatment for a rare type of cancer he had developed.
When the Star Wars director sold his company Lucasfilm to Disney in 2012, he pocketed a cool $4.05 billion (£2.5bn). But rather than spend the proceeds, which were half cash, half Disney stock, Lucas donated the lion’s share to charity, including the George Lucas Educational Foundation. He also donates to Stand Up to Cancer and the Make-A-Wish Foundation.
Dick Van Dyke is best known for starring alongside Julie Andrews in the 1964 film Mary Poppins, but he has also gained a reputation for having a heart of gold when it comes to helping others. The actor’s 13-year-old granddaughter sadly passed away from Reye’s syndrome in 1987, which prompted him to produce a series of TV commercials about the rare brain and liver disease. Van Dyke has also helped to raise millions for arts programmes and local shelters over the years, and in April this year the 95-year-old was spotted handing out cash to people queuing at the Malibu Community Labor Exchange, which helps struggling jobseekers in California.
The WWE superstar might be tough in the ring but outside of wrestling he’s a big teddy bear, and has granted over 600 wishes to children battling life-threatening illnesses via the Make-A-Wish Foundation. In 2012 it was reported that Cena had raised more than $1 million (£627k) for the Susan G. Komen breast cancer charity in partnership with WWE, after he lobbied the wrestling entertainment company to feature a pink middle rope in its rings and sell pink merchandise to raise awareness for the cause. He was named as the second most charitable athlete in the world in 2015. Cena’s work has continued outside of the ring too, and last year he donated $1 million (£718k) to the FitOps Foundation, which trains veterans to be personal trainers, giving them a chance at a new career, and agreed to match donations from the public up to another $1 million (£718k).
The first lady of Hollywood, Meryl Streep, has been a generous contributor to charities over the course of her career. In 2009 she reportedly donated $1 million (£706k) to the National Women’s History Museum, for which she is a spokesperson, and $1 million (£627k) to The Public Theatre in 2012, and it’s estimated that the actor donates around $1 million (£718k) every year to causes such as Oxfam of America and Partners in Health through her Silver Mountain Foundation for the Arts, which she founded with husband Donald Gummer in 1983. Streep’s most recent donation that hit the headlines was $25,000 (£19.4k) to the female victims of the explosion in Beirut, Lebanon in August last year.
In a bid to repair some of the damage done by Hurricane Katrina, singer Beyoncé secretly donated $7 million (£4.2m) to the Knowles-Temenos Place apartment project in her hometown of Houston, Texas over a period of years. The complex was created in 2007 and provides accommodation for homeless men and women and offers employment and self-sufficiency support to help them to get back on their feet. Reverend Rudy Rasmus revealed the star's generosity to KHOU 11 News in 2014. The global crises that unfurled in 2020 also prompted the megastar to dig deep, and in April 2020 she donated $6 million (£4.7m) to coronavirus initiatives, including mental health services, followed by $1 million (£777k) for Black-owned businesses impacted by the pandemic in September, and a further $500,000 (£389k) to people facing eviction because of the COVID-19 outbreak in December. And that's just the donations we know about...
Keanu Reeves is known as one of Hollywood’s nicest people. He allegedly put some of his own money back into the Matrix franchise to ensure that the crew could continue working on the films, and has been known to share his food with homeless people. He even founded his own private charitable foundation, which funds cancer research and children’s hospital wards, which he revealed he had been “running for five or six years” in a 2009 interview with Snopes. Reeves’ philanthropy has kept with the times during the coronavirus pandemic, and the star auctioned off a private 15-minute Zoom date to raise money for Idaho-based children’s cancer charity Camp Rainbow Gold last June.
Jackie Chan grew up in relative poverty in Hong Kong before rising to become one of the most famous martial artists and actors in the world, with a net worth rumoured to fall around $370 million (£266m). Over the years Chan has donated many millions of dollars to several different Red Cross appeals, and he also reportedly plans to leave at least half of his fortune to charity when he dies. Explaining why he wouldn’t be leaving the money to his son, Jaycee, Chan said: “If he is capable, he can make his own money. If he is not, then he will just be wasting my money."
The footballer-turned-Unicef-ambassador has used his fame and wealth to help those less fortunate. When David Beckham moved to French football club Paris Saint-Germain in 2013, he donated his entire salary – thought to be around €800,000 ($1m/£692k) each month – to a French children’s charity. Beckham has raised millions through the Victoria and David Beckham Charitable Trust, which he runs with wife Victoria, and following revenue growth in their respective businesses, the pair made a £1 million ($1.3m) donation to Unicef last year, according to The Sun.
The members of Coldplay have been long-time supporters of several good causes and it was revealed in a 2016 interview with Australian TV show Today that they split 10% of their combined $475 million (£340m) fortune between 28 different charities. Causes supported by the band include Amnesty International, City of Hope and the Red Cross. The band has also done its fair share of charity gigs over the years, including an intimate London concert in aid of War Child in 2016, and a one-off performance at London’s National History Museum in 2019, with proceeds going to environmental charity ClientEarth.
Professional skateboarder Tony Hawk’s organisation The Skatepark Project has raised more than $10 million (£7.2m) to create, upgrade and maintain more than 600 parks across all 50 states in the US. The project has also given guidance and advocacy training to thousands more skateparks across America. Founded in 2002 as the Tony Hawk Foundation, the skating star’s venture focuses on creating safe and legal skate spots in low-income neighbourhoods with large numbers of disadvantaged and at-risk young people.
While most know him as a former member of the Beatles, Ringo Starr is also a very talented painter and computer artist, and he uses his creative streak to help others. Starr sells his artwork at galleries and auctions to generate funds for his non-profit organisation, The Lotus Foundation, which supports charities working to help women and children who have suffered domestic violence, animals in need and a number of medical causes. Starr also auctioned off more than 1,300 personal items including clothing, instruments and jewellery in 2015, and a portion of the $9.2 million (£6m) generated went to the foundation. The drummer even turned his 80th birthday celebrations into a fundraiser event last year, when he hosted “Ringo’s Big Birthday Show” in aid of Black Lives Matter, the David Lynch Foundation and the charity MusiCares, among others.
Harry Potter creator and author J.K. Rowling was the second highest paid author in the world in 2020 according to Forbes, and she is only too happy to share her wealth. Rowling has donated more than £25.3 million ($33.5m) to support research into neurological conditions at a centre in Scotland, named after her mother, who had multiple sclerosis. Rowling has also started her own charity, The Lumos Foundation, which aims to end the institutionalising of children by 2050. Rowling even knocked herself off the Forbes Billionaires list in 2012 after reportedly siphoning off $150 million (£94m) of her fortune for charity. Last year the author pledged £1 million ($1.3m) to support charities through the COVID-19 outbreak.
Where to begin with Oprah’s incredible donations. The Oprah Winfrey Charitable Foundation has donated $400 million (£287m) to causes in need, which has included providing 75 million meals and educating 72,000 people. One 1997 episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show also led to the creation of public charity Oprah’s Angel Network, which has raised more than $80 million (£57m) for charitable projects and grants across the globe. The 'Queen of All Media' donated more than $13 million (£10.1m) to coronavirus efforts last year.
Only after his death in April 2016 did the extent of Prince's philanthropy emerge. The popstar never spoke about his charitable efforts, but in 2017 his ex-wife shed light on just how much he did to help others, describing him as a “fierce philanthropist”. Just one of the charities he gave generously to, for example, was the Harlem Children's Zone, a non-profit organisation for poverty-stricken children and families living in Harlem, New York. Prince donated $1 million (£614k) to the cause in 2011, and at the same time gifted $250,000 (£154k) each to the American Ballet Theater and to educational programmes at the Uptown Dance Academy, both in New York.
George Michael was another popstar revealed to be a secret philanthropist after his death. The stories of his incredible acts of kindness started coming out after he passed away in December 2016. For example, one man on UK TV gameshow Deal Or No Deal had mentioned that he and his wife couldn't afford the IVF treatment they desperately wanted in 2008, and so the singer secretly gifted them £15,000 ($30k) to cover the costs. He is also said to have met a distressed woman in a café who was struggling with debt – on leaving the café, Michael wrote her a cheque for £25,000 ($50k) and asked a waitress to pass it on once he had left.
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