Jackie Collins | Actress and Author | $180 Million

The prolific English romance novelist Jackie Collins had sold over 500 million books all over the world and amassed a fortune amounting to $180 million. She is so successful as an author that her books have also been translated into 40 languages. Before she became a New York Times bestseller of thirty-two novels, all in all, Jackie worked as an actress and stage singer. In fact, she was quite a famous name during the 1950s and was credited as Lynn Curtis for her work in British B movies.

Over time, she gave up her career as an actress and went back to London to write her first novel, The World is Full of Married Men. In 1968, at the age of eighteen, she finished her book and had it published. Though it was instantly banned in both Australia and South Africa, fortunately, it didn’t mar her success. Eight of her books even got a film or TV miniseries adaptation, where one of the eight shows starred her sister Joan Collins!