She grew up in Glenview, Illinois, the daughter of a contractor, with no hint of the staggering fortune that awaited her. Discovered in a nationwide talent search, she became a familiar face in 1980s classics, playing the kind of warm, real characters audiences never forgot. By sixteen, she was out-earning her own father, navigating adult pressures long before she was grown. Yet she never chased the relentless glare of Hollywood fame, choosing instead a quieter life and a future she couldn’t yet see.

That future arrived when she met Tony Ressler, a young financier who had no idea how famous she already was. She paid for their first house, their first vacation, and together they built something far larger than a film career. As Ressler co-founded Apollo Global Management and later Ares Management, she stepped back from acting but leaned into philanthropy, family, and ownership stakes in major sports franchises. Today, Jami Gertz’s estimated multi‑billion‑dollar net worth isn’t an accident of marriage; it’s the result of early success, shared risk, and deliberate choices made long before anyone called her the richest actress alive.