Jami Gertz rose to fame as an ’80s star before quietly building a billion-dollar fortune.
The 59-year-old “Lost Boys” actress is the public face of the NBA’s Atlanta Hawks, which she co-owns with her husband, businessman Tony Ressler – who, according to Forbes, has a net worth of over $12 billion.
Before she began her path to fame, Gertz was raised in a working-class family in Glenview, Illinois. She launched her career as a child actress in 1982 when she starred in the CBS sitcom “Square Pegs.”
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Gertz went on to land roles on TV shows like “The Facts of Life,” “Diff’rent Strokes” and “Family Ties” and appeared in movies including “Sixteen Candles,” “Endless Love” and “Crossroads.”
In 1987, Gertz established herself as a leading actress when she landed starring roles back to back in the hit movies “The Lost Boys” and “Less Than Zero.”
While filming “The Lost Boys” in 1986, Gertz met Ressler, who was then a banker with the now-defunct multinational investment firm Drexel Burnham Lambert. The pair, who were introduced by her publicist, tied the knot two years later.
During a 2018 interview with the Hollywood Reporter, the actress opened up about her journey to becoming a major league basketball team owner and quashed any speculation that it was a “girl-meets-billionaire” tale.
“Everyone thinks I married a rich guy,” she said. “But I made more money – way more money – than Tony when I met him. I paid for our first house. I paid for our first vacation. I married him because I fell in love with him.”
In 1990, Drexel Burnham Lambert went bankrupt due to illegal dealings in the junk bond market. Ressler subsequently founded the private equity firm Apollo Global Management and made much of his fortune after he launched the investment firm Ares Management.
Gertz continued acting, appearing in TV series and movies including “Ally McBeal,” “Seinfeld,” “ER,” “Renegades,” “Jersey Girl” and “This Can’t Be Love.” Gertz gained wider fame when she played Dr. Melissa Reeves, the fiancée of Bill Paxton’s character Bill Harding, in the 1997 mega-hit disaster movie “Twister.”
She later starred in the sitcom “Still Standing” from 2002 to 2006. In 2010, Gertz launched her own production company, Lime Orchard Productions.
“You reach an age, and you slow down, and the jobs are a little hard to come by,” she told THR. “So I decided to put money into a project of my own.”
While Lime Orchard Productions produced one successful movie, 2011’s “A Better Life,” the actress told the outlet that she had lost millions trying to get the company’s other projects off the ground.
“I tried for five years and was not very successful,” Gertz admitted.
In 2015, Gertz and Ressler became co-owners of the Atlanta Hawks. The couple were already minority owners of the Milwaukee Brewers after they joined a group of investors who had bought the baseball team in 2005.
While speaking with THR, Gertz recalled the day her husband and NBA legend Grant Hill purchased the struggling Hawks for $720 million. The two made a bid after a scandal involving the team’s former owner, Bruce Levenson. Levonson decided to sell his controlling share of the Hawks after it emerged that he had written an “inappropriate and offensive” email in 2012.
“He has a little tiny desk in there, and he was taking calls in the closet,” Gertz recalled of the day Ressler put in a bid for the team in June 2015. “I was walking in and out of the closet. And he looked at me, and I looked at him, and he’s like, ‘Jami, are we going to do this?’ I’m like, ‘I don’t know. I’m so scared.’ And he’s like, ‘It would be so much fun.’ And then we were jumping and screaming, ‘Oh my God — we just bought a basketball team!'”
Ressler told THR that Gertz had taken charge and become the face of the team. The actress made her first appearance as the team’s ambassador during the NBA Draft Lottery in 2018, shocking many fans.
While speaking with THR, Gertz acknowledged that many people were surprised by her journey from teen star to the owner of a professional basketball team.
“I get it,” Gertz said. “It’s not your everyday Hollywood actress tale.”
“I think it’s fair to say that she makes a better impression on our fan base than any of us in the organization,” Ressler said of Gertz. “I’m very active on the business and player personnel decision-making. But Jami steps in when it comes to so many parts of the business that I did not appreciate or have any experience in.”
In 2017, Gertz and Ressler left Los Angeles and relocated to Atlanta to be near the team. Gertz told THR that she decided to step away from her acting career so that she could focus on her work with the Hawks.
“It just seemed like a natural moment for me to take a break from acting,” she said. “It’s hard to even say it out loud, because I love what I do. It’s given me so many beautiful things in my life, taught me so many things about myself and the world around me.”
Gertz went on to represent the Hawks in the NBA draft lottery for the 2019 and 2020 drafts. The actress and Ressler built the team a new 90,000 sq.ft. workout facility and oversaw the $192 million renovation of State Farm Arena.
In 2020, Gertz discussed her role in managing the in-house operations of the Atlanta arena and her goal of maximizing the quality of the fan experience.
“It’s a party when you come to State Farm Arena,” Gertz told the Hawks media outlet PeachTree Hoops. “We have won the No. 1 fan experience for a reason. We really worked hard to get that. So I’m feeling like that is copacetic. I used to go in, you should ask [Hawks CEO] Steve Koonin, I used to be like ‘there’s no toilet paper in stall four in the bathroom on the third level. There was a spill on aisle eight, it took people a good 25 minutes to come clean it up. He came without a mop.’”
“I am that kind of crazy, because I know what it’s like for people to buy a ticket. I bought tickets when I couldn’t afford them,” she explained. “I worked hard enough where I could eventually become a season ticket holder. So, I’m coming from that fan experience being in L.A. and seeing where there was great food and then the food wasn’t so good. All of those things. I care a ton about fan experience.”
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