Today, we are going to talk about Richard Dean Anderson and his net worth.
I really like watching television. It’s definitely one of my favorite mediums. Media? I’m aware that the plural of medium (see: television, radio, print) is media. And the plural medium (see: psychics) is mediums. But does “mediums” as a plural for the former medium make sense? I don’t know.
Point is, I like watching television. It’s a lot easier for me to sit on a couch and watch countless of hours of my favorite shows. I do enjoy watching movies inside a cinema. But the accessibility of a TV screen just puts it over the top.
It may feel like television has always been there. But the medium didn’t really start until 1940’s when the television set became a common part of any home. People have put in hours of their lives to create the shows that we watch. And a lot of shows aren’t really available nowadays.
We have seen a lot of stars come and go from our screens. There were those that became icons in pop culture. Countless people have made their marks in our lives. Television was just the easiest way to see what was happening in our world. Well… until the internet became more commonplace.
I have written about a lot of different actors. And most of them were before my time. The names were familiar. But I have never seen most of their work before. Most of what I could find were just clips.
So writing about them feels weird in a way. How do I write about someone I didn’t grow up watching? Does that make me impartial to writing about them?
Richard Dean Anderson: Quick Facts
- Full Name: Richard Dean Anderson
- Birthdate: January 23, 1950
- Occupation: Actor, producer
- Years active: 1976–2013
- Estimated net worth: $8 million
The Beginnings of Richard Dean Anderson
Sometimes you never really know where your life would take you. That’s often the one thing that I think about. Life is very unpredictable. Who would have thought that Richard Dean Anderson would have an interesting path toward acting.
Richard Dean Anderson spent most of his life in Minnesota. He was raised by two parents who both had skills in the arts. His father was a teacher of different subjects in a local high school. Aside from that, he was also an accomplished jazz bassist. His mother, on the hard, was an artist who dabbled mainly in paintings and sculptures.
At an early age, Richard Dean Anderson had some appreciation for the arts. I guess being raised by very talented parents would do that. But like many kids in Minnesota, Richard Dean wanted to become a professional hockey player when he grew up.
But even then, there was a budding actor in there somewhere. The seeds for that were planted when he went with his dad to a rehearsal that he was directing at the high school. During the rehearsal, they used Twinkies as a stand-in for cake. Somehow, that was the seed. If a job included free Twinkies, that was a job worth doing. He did do a few school plays during his childhood. So the seeds were being nourished.
A Change in Direction
Still, Richard Dean pursued his dream of becoming a professional hockey player. Unfortunately, his dreams of playing hockey professionally were shattered, albeit both figuratively and literally. He broke both of his arms in two separate occasions when he was playing in his high school’s hockey team. Those occasions were three weeks apart.
So he had to set aside those dreams. By the time that he was 17, he decided to join some of his friends who were going to do a cross-country bike ride from Minnesota to Alaska. He was always a kid who loved to explore. But it is insane that he managed to ride more than 5,000s miles.
By the time that Richard Dean graduated from high school, he chose to pursue a degree in the performing arts in college. He studied drama at St. Cloud State University. Then he transferred to Ohio University. But he dropped out during his junior year.
After dropping out, he joined one of his friends in North Hollywood. He then moved to New York City. But he ultimately decided to come back to California and settle in Los Angeles.
He did a lot of odd jobs during that time, most of which involved the performing arts. He spent some time as a street mime and a juggler. Then he worked a medieval-style dinner theater. He also worked at marine mammal park where he produced a few marine mammal shows. Aside from that, he also did live theater.
The Start Of His Acting Career
One of the first on-screen thing he did was for a short film that they were making to celebrate the anniversary of the U.S. Marine Core. For any actor just starting out, they will try out for any acting gig that is available. You can’t really be choosy when you’re new to the industry.
A year after that gig, he had his first ever recurring role on television. It was for the soap opera “General Hospital.” You probably know what a soap opera is, right? It’s like if you shot a drama, but the lighting feels like it’s for a live sketch comedy show that airs on Saturday nights. (This sentence is foreshadowing something.) He spent five years in the role of Dr. Jeff Webber. But eventually he had to move on.
He mostly did guest spots on a few television shows, most of them aired in primetime. One of the guest spots he did served as a backdoor pilot for a new sitcom. But nobody really bit on it. After that, he had regular roles for two short-lived series.
It wasn’t until 1985 that he got cast in a role that would change his life.
A Bunch of Household Materials
Richard Dean got casted to play the role of Angus MacGyver in the television series MacGyver. The premise of the series is that MacGyver is somehow known to be very good at using ordinary items in order to get out of some sticky situations.
The weird thing it is that the character is just really, really smart. Like, he’s not just some guy who’d try things out to see if it works. He knows that it will work. MacGyver was professor of physics in the show. But he also served in the military.
Richard Dean Anderson did a lot of his own stunts on the show. I guess he was sort of used to getting hurt because of his experience as a hockey player. But, unsurprisingly, his stunt work would often lead to him suffering a ton of injuries. A few of them would affect him later in life.
He worked on MacGyver for seven years. His show did really well at the time. I mean, it wouldn’t have last seven seasons if it didn’t. The show’s success also resulted in two made-for-TV movies that both aired in 1994. After MacGyver ended, he mostly did a bunch of guest spots in different projects.
So What Is Richard Dean Anderson’s Net Worth?
After MacGyver, his last major role was in the series Stargate SG-1. He played the role of Colonel Jack O’Neill. He was on the show for eight seasons. Somehow, that role of his lasted longer than MacGyver. Richard Dean would continue to play the role in the next two seasons of SG-1 but as a recurring role.
That was one of the other roles that he seems to come back for whenever the writers of whatever Stargate series wanted him back. Somehow there were two other Stargate series after SG-1?
Most of the other stuff he did in the 2000s going into the early 2010s were mostly guest spots. Aside from returning as Jack O’Neill, he also returned to doing MacGyver. This time, it was for a pretaped comedy sketch on Saturday Night Live called MacGruber. (This was what it was foreshadowing.)
The pretaped sketches are basically a love letter of sorts to MacGyver. In this installment of the recurring sketch, MacGyver is MacGruber’s dad. They haven’t really talked to each other in long time. In the next two parts of the sketch, they became close. But it didn’t last long. [cut to the explosion]
At that point, Richard Dean Anderson was close to retiring from acting. He still did a few guest spots in the 2010s. But the last guest spot he did was for the CBS comedy “Don’t Trust the B—- in Apartment 23” in 2013.
As of this writing, Richard Dean Anderson has a net worth of $8 million. That’s not really bad for someone who has retired from acting. It seems that he is still doing well.
It is amazing to see how kept doing roles on television despite having sustained a lot of injuries early in his career. I guess that really applies more to those that do their own stunts. But it’s great that he managed to keep at it until he can’t.