Category:
Richest Celebrities › Directors
Net Worth:
$60 Million
Birthdate:
Mar 10, 1953 (71 years old)
Birthplace:
London
Gender:
Male
Height:
6 ft (1.83 m)
Profession:
Screenwriter, Film director, Film Producer, Television Director, Television producer
Nationality:
Canada
Paul Haggis is a Canadian writer, director, and producer who has a net worth of $60 million. Paul Haggis is best known for writing and producing the consecutive Oscar Best Picture winners “Million Dollar Baby” and “Crash,” the latter of which he also directed.
Among his other film credits, he wrote and directed “In the Valley of Elah,” “The Next Three Days,” and “Third Person.” On television, Haggis helped create such shows as “Walker, Texas Ranger” and “Family Law.”
Paul Haggis’ show business career began as a writer working on various shows, including “The Facts of Life”, “The Love Boat”, and “One Day at a Time”. His first major hit in the film industry came with 2004’s “Million Dollar Baby”, which Haggis wrote and produced. The movie, starring Clint Eastwood, Hilary Swank, and Morgan Freeman, won four Academy Awards, including the Oscar for Best Picture. Haggis followed “Million Dollar Baby” with 2004’s “Crash”. He wrote and directed the movie, which also won the Oscar for Best Picture and Best Writing, among several other Academy Award nominations.
He made movie history as the only person who has ever written back-to-back Best Picture winners at the Academy Awards. He has worked on the scripts for “Casino Royale”, “Quantum of Solace”, “Terminator Salvation”, and “The Next Three Days”.
He publicly split from the Church of Scientology after more than three decades of membership after a local branch of the church endorsed California’s Proposition 8. Haggis defected and was featured in an article in “The New Yorker” chronicling his experience in the church and his allegations against the organization. He founded his own non-profit organization, Artists for Peace and Justice, which works with Haiti’s poor communities.
Believe it or not, even after directing/writing/producing multiple highly-successful feature films, one of Paul Haggis’ largest career paydays actually came from the television show “Walker, Texas Ranger.” More impressively, his enormous payday came after only working on the show for a total of two weeks.
According to Haggis’ telling of the story, in 1992 he was approached by CBS executives to help “punch up” the pilot script for a show they were working on starring Chuck Norris. They were not happy with the script they had received. That show, obviously, was “Walker, Texas Ranger.”
Paul didn’t think much of the Walker, Texas Ranger’s prospects as a television show and he spent less than two weeks writing his version of the pilot which was then submitted to CBS. As a reward for his two week freelance job, Paul was given a “Co-Creator” credit on the show.
He was wrong about Walker’s prospects for success. The show went on to produce 202 episodes over eight seasons, even spawning a TV movie, a spinoff an THREE NOVELS.
Thanks to his co-creator credit earned for two weeks of work, Paul earned around $600,000 during the show’s run. Not a bad payday on its own. But the real windfall came when the show was sold into syndication. For his two weeks of work, Paul was rewarded with 5% of the show’s backend points. Walker Texas Ranger would go on to earn around $600 million in syndication sales to this day. Those sales have resulted in Haggis earning A LEAST $30 million from the show. For two weeks of work performed in 1992.
According to Paul:
“It was the most successful thing I ever did. Two weeks of work. They never even used my script!“
Paul Haggis was born on March 10, 1953 in London, Ontario, Canada to Mary and World War II veteran Ted. Brought up Catholic, he went to St. Thomas More Elementary School. Haggis then attended Ridley College for a while, but became insubordinate by skipping his mandatory Royal Canadian Army Cadets drills and breaking into the prefect’s office. He was consequently transferred to a more progressive school in Muskoka Lakes. Haggis went on to attend the H. B. Beal Secondary School, where he studied art. Deeply inspired by film, he opened a theater in Toronto to show films that had been banned by the Ontario Board of Censors. For his higher education, Haggis went to Fanshawe College to study cinematography.
Haggis moved to Los Angeles, California in 1975 to become a screenwriter in the entertainment industry. He started off writing for a number of television shows, including “Richie Rich,” “One Day at a Time,” and “The Facts of Life.”
In 1993, Haggis made his feature film directorial debut with the drama “Red Hot,” which he also co-wrote. The film stars Balthazar Getty as Alexi, a poor music school student in Soviet-era Latvia who forms a clandestine rock band. Haggis didn’t have another film credit until 2004, when he wrote and produced Clint Eastwood’s sports drama “Million Dollar Baby.” Adapted from F.X. Toole’s collection “Rope Burns: Stories from the Corner,” the film was a huge critical and commercial success, becoming Haggis’s breakthrough. “Million Dollar Baby” went on to win four Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Haggis followed this by directing, writing, and producing the ensemble crime drama “Crash”; another huge success, the film won Haggis Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay.
After “Crash,” Haggis penned the screenplays for a number of films. In 2006, he wrote the romantic dramedy “The Last Kiss,” based on a 2001 Italian film. The same year, he reunited with Clint Eastwood to co-write the director’s war film “Flags of Our Fathers,” and also joined the James Bond franchise by co-writing “Casino Royale.” Haggis’s next film as director was 2007’s “In the Valley of Elah,” which he also wrote. The year after that, he returned to the Bond franchise to co-write “Quantum of Solace.” Haggis subsequently wrote and directed the action thriller “The Next Three Days” and the romantic drama “Third Person.” Among his other film credits, he co-directed the 2018 AIDS documentary “5B” with Dan Krauss.
Haggis had his first major credit on television in 1987 as co-writer of the Disney made-for-TV comedy film “The Return of the Shaggy Dog.” Also that year, he began writing for the ABC drama series “thirtysomething.” In 1990, Haggis created his first of many television series: the CBS sitcom “City,” starring Valerie Harper. Ultimately, the show was short-lived, and was canceled after a single season. Haggis subsequently created another short-lived CBS sitcom called “You Take the Kids,” starring Nell Carter. He had better success with the action crime series “Walker, Texas Ranger,” which he created in 1993. Starring Chuck Norris as the titular character, the show ran for eight seasons through 2001.
Haggis had success with a number of other shows in the 90s. In 1994, he created the Canadian series “Due South,” which he also wrote and directed; it ran for four seasons through 1999. Haggis also created, wrote, and directed the CBS crime series “EZ Streets,” which ran from 1996 to 1997. After that, he created and wrote the series “Michael Hayes,” starring David Caruso and Ruben Santiago-Hudson. Haggis next had one of his biggest hit shows with the CBS legal drama “Family Law,” which he created, wrote, and directed. Starring Kathleen Quinlan, the series ran for three seasons from 1999 to 2002. Later, in 2007, Haggis created, wrote, and directed the short-lived NBC series “The Black Donnellys.” In 2015, he won acclaim for directing the HBO miniseries “Show Me a Hero,” starring Oscar Isaac as real-life New York politician Nick Wasicsko.
While still residing in London, Ontario in 1974, Haggis joined the Church of Scientology. He remained an active member for 35 years before leaving the organization in 2009 due to the Church’s support of California’s homophobic Proposition 8 initiative. Haggis now considers himself an atheist.
In early 2018, Haggis was accused of sexual misconduct, resulting in a civil lawsuit. Haggis denied the allegations and asserted that one of the accusers had tried to blackmail him. Reportedly, he then attempted to block the testimonies of additional people who claimed to be victims.
In June 2022 Paul was arrested in Italy on allegations that he sexually assaulted an unidentified woman.
Haggis married his first wife, Diane Christine Gettas, in 1977. The couple had three daughters before divorcing in 1994. Later, in 1997, Haggis wed actress Deborah Rennard, with whom he had a son. The pair eventually divorced in 2016.
In 2010 Paul paid a little under $4 million for a 3,000 square-foot loft apartment in New York City’s SoHo neighborhood.
Paul previously owned a home in Santa Monica, California which he bought with his ex-wife Deborah Rennard for $2.6 million. They sold this home in 2010 for $2 million.
In 2008 Paul bought a new Santa Monica home for $2.365 million
