With the amount of wealth that celebrities acquire through their careers, it is only natural that they try to grow it. One of the most common methods for this is investment. While many of the rich and famous have made millions off of their investments, many have fallen short and lost quite a bit of money.
While the conventional thing would be to invest in products, companies, or even celebrity-themed restaurants, some have chosen to instead buy entire towns. Johnny Depp has famously purchased a French village and has been trying to sell it for $63 million. Kim Basinger bought the majority of the land in a town worth $20 million but due to bankruptcy, was forced to sell it all for around $1 million. Another celebrity that can be added to this list is the Die Hard star, Bruce Willis.
Bruce Willis Tried to Buy a Town in Idaho
Bruce Willis started off slow when he decided to buy the town of Hailey, Idaho. He started by purchasing a ranch and eventually bought more and more properties there. His goal was to create a peaceful life away from the flashing lights of Hollywood and mainly to gain more privacy. This plan, however, backfired after the town was labeled as Haileywood due to the involvement of Willis and his wife, Demi Moore.
The two were about to purchase a club in the area worth $200,000, which was a dramatic jump. He also bought a popular Diner and a Theater. He bought all these properties under an alias name but soon enough the inhabitants caught on and the local journalists took it upon themselves to expose the actor and his intentions.
Bruce Willis Was Upset When the Media Leaked His Plans to Buy a Town
It would seem that journalists were already aware of Bruce Willis’ plan to slowly but surely buy the entire town. This made Willis quite angry, that they ended up exposing this, as he wished to keep his plans private.
“We felt it was our duty, our journalistic responsibility, to let our readers know exactly who was buying property on main street, and I think he was less than happy with us over that,” Wayne Adair, a former journalist on the case revealed.“He came in here enraged, saying we were intruding on his privacy, and canceled all his advertising. It wasn’t very smart. The next week we ran a story about him canceling his advertising account, and the story was picked up by the national news wires.”
His plan ultimately collapsed and he had to sell his ranch for a considerably lesser price. The locals were quite unhappy with all of this. Apparently, Bruce Willis was a bad employer, being called a nightmare to work with. He also forced them to work unpaid hours for which he was actually sued by an employee for $54,000 over unpaid bills and work.
Source: The Things
