Mercedes Ruehl Net Worth | Celebrity Net Worth

What is Mercedes Ruehl’s Net Worth?

Mercedes Ruehl is an American actress who has a net worth of $2 million. Mercedes Ruehl is known for her performances in such films as “84 Charing Cross Road,” “Married to the Mob,” “Last Action Hero,” “Gia,” and “The Fisher King,” with the latter earning her the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Ruehl has also had a prolific stage career, winning a Tony Award for Neil Simon’s play “Lost in Yonkers” and receiving further nominations for “The Shadow Box” and “The Goat, or Who is Sylvia?”

Early Life and Education

Mercedes Ruehl was born on February 28, 1948 in the Queens borough of New York City to schoolteacher Mercedes and FBI agent Vincent. She has Cuban and Irish ancestry on her mother’s side and German and Irish ancestry on her father’s side. Ruehl had an older brother named Peter. Due to the work of their father, the kids moved often with their family, living in several other states. For her higher education, Ruehl went to the College of New Rochelle, from which she graduated with her BA in English in 1969. She later attended the Pacific Conservatory of the Performing Arts in California.

Film Career

Ruehl had her first credited film role in the 1979 action thriller “The Warriors,” in which she has a brief part as a policewoman. She began landing bigger roles in the latter half of the 1980s, with credits including “Heartburn,” “84 Charing Cross Road,” and “The Secret of My Success.” Ruehl had her breakout year in 1988 with supporting roles in “Big” and “Married to the Mob”; for the latter, she won the National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Supporting Actress. She was subsequently in “Slaves of New York” and “Crazy People.” In 1991, Ruehl was in “Another You” and “The Fisher King.” For her performance as a spunky video store owner in the latter film, she won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Ruehl followed that success with roles in “Lost in Yonkers” and “Last Action Hero,” both released in 1993. She reprised her role from the stage production in the former film.

In 1997, Ruehl starred opposite Jean Reno in “Roseanna’s Grave.” She next appeared in the 1999 thriller “The Minus Man,” an adaptation of Lew McCreary’s novel of the same name. Kicking off the new millennium, Ruehl starred in “What’s Cooking?” and “The Amati Girls.” In 2002, she starred opposite Ben Kingsley in the family comedy “Spooky House.” Ruehl acted infrequently on the big screen in the years after that, with her next credit not coming until the 2014 film “Chu and Blossom.” In 2019, she had a memorable role as the den mother of a strip club in the crime dramedy “Hustlers.” Ruehl went on to star in the mockumentary comedy “The Nana Project,” which premiered in 2023.

(Photo by Walter McBride/Getty Images)

Television Career

Ruehl made her television debut in 1977 with a recurring role on the NBC soap opera “The Doctors.” She only had a few television credits in the 1980s, including guest roles on “Our Family Honor” and “Kate & Allie.” In the 1990s, Ruehl had notable roles in the television films “Indictment: The McMartin Trial,” “Subway Stories: Tales from the Underground,” and “Gia.” She also had a recurring role as radio station owner Kate Costas on the NBC sitcom “Frasier.” Ruehl mostly appeared in television films in the ’00s, with credits including “All-American Girl: The Mary Kay Letourneau Story,” “Guilt by Association,” “Zeyda and the Hitman,” and “A Girl Like Me: The Gwen Araujo Story.” Elsewhere, she appeared in some episodes of “Law & Order” and “Entourage.” In the 2010s, Ruehl had guest roles on such shows as “Monday Mornings,” “Life in Pieces,” “The Mysteries of Laura,” “2 Broke Girls,” and “NCIS.” She also played the recurring role of Connie Teresi on the Starz series “Power.” Ruehl’s credits in the first half of the 2020s include guest roles on “New Amsterdam” and “Accused.”

Stage Career

After appearing in the off-Broadway plays “Coming of Age in Soho” and “The Marriage of Bette and Boo,” Ruehl made her Broadway debut in the 1985 premiere of “I’m Not Rappaport.” She subsequently went off-Broadway again for the premiere of “Other People’s Money.” Returning to Broadway in 1991, Ruehl starred in Neil Simon’s acclaimed new play “Lost in Yonkers.” The play won numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and four Tony Awards, including Best Actress in a Play for Ruehl. In 1992, Ruehl starred in a production of “Antony and Cleopatra” at the Actors Theatre of Louisville in Kentucky. She returned to Broadway in 1994 for a revival of “The Shadow Box,” which garnered her a Tony Award nomination for Best Featured Actress in a Play. Ruehl was subsequently in a revival of “The Rose Tattoo” in 1995. At the dawn of the new millennium, she appeared off-Broadway in “The Vagina Monologues” and at Minneapolis’s Guthrie Theater in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”

In 2002, Ruehl starred in the Broadway premiere of Edward Albee’s play “The Goat, or Who is Sylvia?” It went on to win the Tony Award for Best Play, while Ruehl received a nomination for Best Actress in a Play. Ruehl went on to appear off-Broadway in “Woman Before a Glass” in 2005. Concluding the decade, she starred in the Broadway premiere of “The American Plan.” In 2010, Ruehl starred in Edward Albee’s “Occupant” and in a London production of Neil Simon’s “The Prisoner of Second Avenue.” A couple of years later, she appeared in “The How and the Why” at the McCarter Theatre at Princeton University. In 2015, Ruehl starred in the one-woman play “Full Gallop” at the Old Globe in San Diego. She returned to New York in 2017 to play Ma Beckoff in the revamp of Harvey Fierstein’s “Torch Song Trilogy,” and reprised the role when the show transferred to Broadway in 2019.

Personal Life

In 1999, Ruehl married painter and underground comix artist David Geiser. The couple adopted a son named Jake. Ruehl had previously had a son named Christopher whom she put up for adoption in 1976; they reunited in the late 1990s. In 2017, Ruehl announced she was no longer with Geiser but remained close. Geiser passed away in 2020.