When you're a celebrity with a huge fanbase, an incredible wardrobe and homes full of fabulous things, you can afford to give some things away to good causes. Click or scroll through what these generous celebrities donated for causes including the fight against COVID-19, and how much they raised.
It's hard to believe, but true, that in 2005 Star Trek actor William Shatner passed a kidney stone and in early 2006 he announced that he was selling it off for charity. Even more unbelievable is that online casino GoldenPalace.com snapped it up for $25,000 (£14k) at the time. Shatner generously threw in the surgical stent and string used to help pass the stone. All the money raised went to housing charity Habitat for Humanity.
Complaining of a cold while on the US talk show Tonight in December 2008, actor Scarlett Johansson was handed a tissue by the show's host Jay Leno. She blew her nose on the tissue twice and marked it with lipstick in the process. She then put it in a bag, which she signed. The dirty tissue was put on eBay and it sold for $5,300 (£3.5k). Johansson asked for the proceeds to be given to the charity USA Harvest.
British actor Colin Firth has donated multiple pairs of shoes to celebrity auctions to raise funds for Small Steps Project, which supports children who live on garbage dumps across the world. He was one of the first celebrity donors in 2011 when he gave a pair of his “old leathers” to the cause, and in 2015 he donated his black leather Tod’s brogues. The auction goes ahead each year, and the 2020 collection of celebrity shoes featured racing boots belonging to Formula 1 racing driver Lewis Hamilton, which sold for £4,000 ($5.4k), and trainers owned and signed by Queen frontman Brian May, which sold for £3,900 ($5.2k).
In 2011 Australian pop star Kylie Minogue donated the silky red bra and knickers that she wore on the cover of her 2012 calendar, along with a signed copy of the calendar, to a charity auction. The items were expected to fetch between £2,000 ($3.1k) and £4,000 ($6.2k), but the La Perla underwear actually went for £5,000 ($7.8k). The money was donated to the StudyVox Foundation, a charity that helps young people in financial difficulties. It wasn’t the first time that the former Neighbours star has sold her underwear for charity – in 2002 one of her bras sold for AU$6,880 (US$3,850/£2,470) as part of Breast Cancer Awareness Month.
During an appearance on a breakfast TV show in Australia in 2012, former One Direction band member and now solo singer Niall Horan was treated to the local delicacy of Vegemite on toast. Not a fan of the Aussie yeast spread, Horan left most of the toast uneaten and the TV crew decided to auction it off for charity. Fans desperate to own the food featuring Horan’s bitemark sent in bids over AU$100,000 (US$104k/£65k), with profits going to children’s charity YoungCare. It’s unknown whether the bread was actually posted to the final bidder, but the auction did come with an advisory note that the toast should not be consumed.
Although they are no longer a couple, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie continue to co-own the 18-acre Château Miraval estate in the south of France they purchased in 2008. They teamed up with legendary winemaking family the Perrins to create the Miraval wine brand, and went on to auction a barrel of white wine produced on the estate for €10,000 ($13.5/£8.3k) in 2013. The 60-gallon barrel was signed by the actors, and the money raised went towards funding an eco-friendly village in the Kivu region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
David Beckham has always been seen as a leader in the fashion stakes and in 2013 he donated a selection of his clothes, including Dolce and Gabbana suits, to a British Red Cross charity shop in London. The suits were priced from £600 ($980), a fraction of their original cost. All the proceeds went to help victims of Typhoon Haiyan, which had struck the Philippines. After attending Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s wedding in May 2018, the pair also donated the outfits they’d worn to the royal ceremony (pictured) to a competition that was raising money for the We Love Manchester emergency fund, which helped those affected by the Manchester Arena terrorist attack in England in 2017.
In 2013, Madonna auctioned off a Fernand Leger painting from her private art collection at Sotheby’s in New York City. She purchased the painting, entitled Trois Femmes a La Table Rouge, for just over $3 million (£1.5m) in 1990. She sold it 23 years later for $7.2 million (£4.4m) and the proceeds went to her Ray of Light Foundation, which supports girls’ education in the Middle East, South Asia and Africa. In 2016 another charity sale was arranged by the star, this time in aid of her Raising Malawi organisation, and it included photos from her wedding to her first husband Sean Penn as well as works by British artist Tracey Emin.
In 2013, US TV personality and actress Oprah Winfrey had a clear out for a yard sale that was held online and at the Santa Barbara Polo & Racquet Club in California. She sold off pieces of furniture, home accessories and artwork. A pair of velvet sofas sold for $8,750 (£5.4k) and six 18th-century Louis XVI armchairs made $60,000 (£36.7k). Over $600,000 (£367k) was raised in total. Winfrey donated all the proceeds to her Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy Foundation College fund. Winfrey had another charity clear out in 2016, and sold 250 pieces on eBay for the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls.
As well as donating her outfit from Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's 2018 wedding, fashion designer and former Spice Girl Victoria Beckham sold off 600 items from her wardrobe back in August 2014, with all the proceeds going to mothers2mothers, a charity that supports mothers living with HIV. The items were valued by Christie's and the pieces were sold on the website The Outnet. The clothing that was sold off included pieces by Dolce & Gabbana, Roland Mouret and Louis Féraud. The sales figure were not published, but the items are thought to have netted thousands.
In December 2015 Hollywood actor Sylvester Stallone put dozens of his old costumes, props and personal possessions up for sale in Stallone – The Auction. The black leather jacket he wore when playing Rocky Balboa in the first Rocky movie went for $149,000 (£98.9k) and costume armour and a prop gun from Judge Dredd made $30,000 (£19.9k). The actor is a watch aficionado, and 24 of his timepieces were also sold. In total the sale netted over $3 million (£2m). However, this December Stallone managed to outdo himself when he sold five watches at a Phillips auction as part of a charity initiative organised by Cirque du Soleil co-founder Guy Laliberté. The watches sold for a total of $3,117,400 (£2.4m), more than three times their estimated value.
US reality TV star Kourtney Kardashian has cleared out her closet and listed her unwanted pieces on eBay multiple times, and often gives a share of the proceeds to charity. In 2016, she listed trousers, T-shirts, blouses, bodysuits, belts and jackets on the site with bids starting at $0.99 (£0.74), but prices soon skyrocketed as bidding wars commenced. And 10% of all proceeds were given to the wish-granting charity The Dream Foundation. Selling old clothes on eBay is standard practice for the Kardashians, and between February 2013 and 2014 the family managed to rake in $270,000 (£170k) through the site, with a percentage of sales going to their chosen charities.
World-class footballer Cristiano Ronaldo has often raised money for charity, and in 2017 he made an incredible £600,000 ($800k) for the Make-A-Wish Foundation by donating one of his four Ballon d’Or trophies. The award was a replica of his 2013 trophy. Ronaldo was voted the most charitable athlete in the world in 2015 for his many acts of generosity, such as paying for the brain surgery of a 10-year-old fan and reportedly giving £5 million ($6.7m) to charitable causes in Nepal following the earthquake in 2015.
In 2017 American actress, writer, producer and director Lena Dunham listed 169 items of her clothing on website The RealReal. The inventory included items from her show Girls, her Met Gala gowns and various Hillary Clinton T-shirts. The sale raised $20,000 (£15k), all of which she donated to the charity Planned Parenthood. All items placed on The RealReal are inspected, authenticated and photographed by the company, although they take 30% of all profits.
In November 2017 US rapper DJ Khaled listed 28 items of clothing on the resell site Poshmark, including matching suits that he'd had made for himself and his son Asahd, shown with him here. The blue sateen suits were the ones that they had worn for the shot on his Grateful album cover. DJ Khaled 's suit was priced at $2,250 (£1.7k) and Asahd's at $1,350 (£1k). A percentage of the profits were donated to Khaled's Win More Music campaign with Get Schooled, which encourages kids to graduate high school.
Anyone browsing in the Shooting Star Chase charity shop in London's Fulham in February 2018 may have been surprised by the quality of the goods on offer. This is because its rails would have been full of clothes and jewellery donated by the British actor Joan Collins, who is a patron of the children's hospice charity. The star gifted over 500 designer items to the store. These were priced from £15 ($18) up to £750 ($945) for a designer suit by Lloyd Klein.
Stranger Things actor Millie Bobby Brown is among a host of stars who donated their possessions to an online charity auction on luxury pre-owned site Xupes in 2018 in aid of the British stray dog charity Wild at Heart Foundation. Her Coach bag had a price tag of £499 ($628). Also listed on the site was a pair of Stuart Weitzman sandals donated by supermodel Kate Moss for £849 ($1k).
In March 2018 fans of American model and actress Chloë Sevigny's quirky clothing got the chance to get their hands on some of her cast-offs when she listed them on The RealReal. She invited her Instagram followers to shop her closet and highlighted that a portion of the proceeds would be donated to the Hetrick-Martin Institute in support of young LBGQT people. Items included a Gucci sweatshirt priced at $1,395 (£1k) and an Agent Provocateur silk slip dress costing $295 (£212). The star also took part in a Second Hand September sale in support of Oxfam GB earlier this year, and donated a Miu Miu dress that sold for £220 ($280).
The most famous member of the Kardashian clan, Kim Kardashian West is also partial to selling clothing on eBay and donating a percentage of the profits to charity. Her most recent auction took place in May 2019 and, among the 200 pieces listed, the priciest was one of the TV personality’s second-hand Chanel bags, which had fans bidding beyond the $4,000 (£3k) mark. An undisclosed percentage of the money raised went to The Buried Alive Project, which is an organisation looking to reform the US justice system. The sale came after Oxygen Media approved a two-hour documentary covering Kardashian West’s efforts to free prisoners she believed to be innocent.
Instead of donating an item to sell, Tom Hanks bucked the trend in 2019 and actually funded the renovation of a classic car so that a children's hospital in Poland could sell it on and keep the funds. The vintage Syrena 105 was renovated and put on display in Bielsko-Biała, southern Poland before it was sold. Hanks was returning a favour as in 2017 he was gifted a renovated vintage Fiat 126p by a group led by Polish woman Monika Jaskólska, the head of a fund supporting the children's hospital in Bielsko-Biała. Jaskólska had seen a photo Hanks posted of a Fiat 126 with a Hungarian licence plate, and decided to raise money online to gift the car to the two-time Oscar winner.
Famous couple Hailey and Justin Bieber decided to auction off a portion of their modern art collection in 2019 to raise funds for two charities that tackle poverty: LIFT Los Angeles and Inner-City Arts. The 17 pieces up for grabs featured high-profile names in the contemporary world, such as Ryan Hewett, Dalek and Miss Zukie. It was estimated that the artwork would fetch anywhere between $275 (£210) for a small cartoon figure by Greg Mike, to $14,400 ($11k) for an oil painting by Hewett. Long before marrying Hailey, Bieber had already started auctioning things for charity. In 2011, he gave a lock of his hair to talk show host Ellen DeGeneres and she promised to sell it for a good cause. It went under the hammer for $40,668 (£25k), which went to California-based animal rights organisation the Gentle Barn Foundation.
Last year supermodel Naomi Campbell set up her fourth pop-up shop in London's Westfield shopping mall at White City. The shop stocked Campbell's cast-offs and items donated by major designer brands. It's not known exactly how much the event has raised each year, but the 2014 edition brought in £65,000 ($87k) and sold out within a week. Campbell also hosted a charity gala in 2019, which was attended by 500 A-list celebrities, who raised cash for charity by splashing out on prized art and designer items.
Another celebrity who has been auctioning off possessions to raise money for charity is Jennifer Aniston. The Friends star put a black and white nude portrait of herself up for sale in June, and it was expected to sell for up to $7,000 (£5.2k). In fact, the iconic 1995 shot made more than twice its estimate, and the hammer came down at $16,250 (£12.1k). All the money raised went towards NAF Clinics, which provides women’s health services.
In June, reality TV star and model Kendall Jenner auctioned off a selection of her clothes for charity. Along with Kate Moss and Gigi and Bella Hadid, Jenner raised money for NHS Charities Together and the NAACP by parting with her designer gear, including a cream Chanel jacket that sold for £2,000 ($2.7k). Like her siblings, Jenner is also partial to offloading her clothes onto eBay, and placed 200 designer shoes, handbags, and items of clothing on the site in 2015. Labels included Alexander Wang, Givenchy, Rebecca Minkoff and Balenciaga and the reserve price on many items was set as low as 99 cents (65p), but bids racked up fast. It's not known how much she made in total, but a proportion of the proceeds were donated to the Children's Hospital in Los Angeles.
In July, a group of celebrities donated some of their possessions to Oxfam in order to raise funds for the charity’s coronavirus response. The sale included a pair of Jimmy Choo sunglasses donated by actor Dame Helen Mirren (pictured), a Quad Vena amplifier belonging to Fatboy Slim and Star Wars cufflinks worn by actor Simon Pegg when he attended the UK premiere of The Force Awakens. In total, the auction raised almost £8,000 ($10.7k) for the appeal.
After performing at the Academy of Country Music Awards in September, Taylor Swift opted to auction off the guitar she had played to raise money for the organisation’s COVID-19 response fund. The black J-180 Gibson acoustic guitar was signed and dated by the singer and also came with five personalised picks commemorating Swift’s albums Reputation and Lover. The instrument fetched $40,000 (£30k) through auction house Christie’s.
A childhood LEGO set was among the possessions donated to a charity auction by singer Ed Sheeran in October to raise money for young people in his home county of Suffolk, England. The singer’s collection of toy bricks was accompanied by a signed card and eventually sold for £4,150 ($5.6k). Fans were also able to bid on a £3 ticket to his first ever gig, which sold for £6,400 ($8.6k), and handwritten lyrics to his chart-topping hit Perfect, which sold for £23,500 ($31.5k). However, the piece that stole the show was Dab 2, the first of his own paintings that Sheeran has ever put up for sale. The abstract piece fetched a whopping £40,000 ($53.6k).
In November, British actor Tom Hollander gave a pair of bright red underpants to an auction with Celebrity Bottom Drawer in aid of East Anglia’s Children’s Hospices in England. The actor sported the underwear for his role in the comedy film In The Loop in 2009. He also donated scripts for Pirates of the Caribbean and a Tiffany travel clock that had been gifted to him by Tom Cruise. He's not the only celebrity who donated to the auction, with Ed Sheeran donating trainers and jeans, and David Schwimmer giving a signed copy of a script from his Sky TV show The Intelligence. In total the auction made £146,466 ($192.5k) for the hospices.
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