How Much Are They Worth?
Celebrity fortunes, explained
How did Margaret Qualley build this fortune?
The answer unfolds through the career, earnings, deals and assets behind the headline estimate.
Before the fame
The background and early turning points that shaped Margaret Qualley’s route to prominence.
Sarah Margaret Qualley was born on 23 October 1994 in Kalispell, Montana, according to her official biography at the Golden Globes. She is the daughter of the actor Andie MacDowell and the former model Paul Qualley, and she grew up largely in North Carolina with her older siblings Justin and Rainey.
Her first discipline was ballet rather than acting. She trained seriously as a dancer through her teens, and that physical training has been visible across her screen work ever since, from the dance numbers of Fosse/Verdon to the choreographed set pieces that later made her a fixture of fashion campaigns.
Qualley moved into modelling and small screen roles in her late teens. Her first substantial part came in HBO’s The Leftovers, which ran from 2014 to 2017 and cast her as Jill Garvey, the teenage daughter of Justin Theroux’s character, a run the Golden Globes lists among her key television credits.
Film parts followed quickly. She appeared in Shane Black’s The Nice Guys in 2016, and took on independent work that showed range rather than a single type, including the convent drama Novitiate. The mix of prestige television and genre film set the pattern for her career.
The breakthrough years
The career decisions and defining moments that turned recognition into sustained earning power.
The year that changed her standing was 2019. She played the hitchhiker Pussycat in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and in the same year portrayed the dancer Ann Reinking in FX’s Fosse/Verdon, a role that earned her a nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Limited Series or Movie from the Television Academy.
Netflix’s Maid arrived in October 2021 and made her a lead. She played Alex, a young mother working as a cleaner after leaving an abusive relationship, opposite her own mother. Deadline reported that the series was on course to reach an estimated 67 million households in its first four weeks, ahead of the 62 million recorded for The Queen’s Gambit.
What the work can earn
Reported pay, contracts, royalties and performance income reveal how the fortune was funded.
Maid brought a lead actress nomination from the Television Academy in 2022 and a Golden Globe nomination in the limited series category. She then became a recurring collaborator of Yorgos Lanthimos, appearing in Poor Things in 2023 and playing multiple roles in Kinds of Kindness in 2024, the same year she starred in Ethan Coen’s Drive-Away Dolls.
The Substance, Coralie Fargeat’s body-horror satire opposite Demi Moore, became the defining film of that period. She played Sue, the younger self created by the title drug, and received a 2025 Golden Globe nomination for Best Supporting Actress, as recorded by the Golden Globes. Deadline reported the film heading for a global box office take of $70 million to $75 million.
Her two Golden Globe nominations, two Emmy nominations and a Cannes presence with both The Substance and Kinds of Kindness in 2024 moved her into the small group of actors who are sought out by auteur directors and fashion houses alike. Variety noted that The Substance won the best screenplay prize at Cannes and became the distributor Mubi’s biggest release, with a reported budget of $17.5 million.
In 2025 she continued the pattern with Honey Don’t!, another Ethan Coen comedy, and a role in Richard Linklater’s Blue Moon.
The business beyond the main career
Endorsements, ownership interests and investments can keep compounding long after the initial breakthrough.
Fashion is the second pillar of her career. She has been a Chanel house ambassador since 2022 and fronted the Chanel campaign for the CHANEL 22 handbag, shot by Inez and Vinoodh, before appearing in later seasonal campaigns for the house. The fee for the ambassadorship has not been disclosed.
Her best-known commercial work predates Chanel. In 2016 she starred in Spike Jonze’s short film for the Kenzo World fragrance, dancing through the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles, which The Hollywood Reporter covered on release. The film went on to win the Grand Prix in film at the Epica Awards, according to Adweek.
Qualley has not launched a consumer brand, a production company of public note or an investment vehicle that has been reported by the trade press. Her income appears to come from acting fees and fashion work rather than ownership stakes.
The commercial success of the projects around her still matters to her earning power. Variety reported that The Substance grossed $14.8 million in its first ten days, surpassing the $10 million Mubi had earned from Priscilla, and a proven box office draw commands higher fees on the next contract.
Notable luxury item
A reported property or major asset offers a tangible glimpse of the wealth behind the public estimate.
There is no publicly documented property purchase by Qualley in the major business or entertainment press, and no record of what, if anything, she owns in her own name.
She married the musician and producer Jack Antonoff in August 2023 in Beach Haven on Long Beach Island, New Jersey, where Antonoff spent his childhood summers, as described by New Jersey Monthly. Any property the couple hold jointly has not been itemised in reliable reporting, so this estimate does not include a specific real estate figure.
Margaret Qualley’s estimated net worth
Public estimates vary because private contracts, investments, taxes and liabilities are not fully disclosed.
How this estimate is calculated
No salary for any of her films or series has been published, and the value of her Chanel ambassadorship is undisclosed. Nothing in this profile is a payment to Qualley. The figures that exist describe the projects around her: Deadline reported an estimated 67 million households for Maid in its first four weeks, Deadline put The Substance on course for $70 million to $75 million worldwide, and Variety put its budget at $17.5 million and its first ten days in the United States at $14.8 million. A film’s gross belongs to its distributor and its cinemas, not to its cast.
The working is therefore built on assumed rates rather than reported ones. If a performer with this filmography grossed somewhere between $18 million and $28 million over twelve years, and if roughly a fifth of that went to agents, managers and lawyers and roughly half of what remained to federal and state tax, the residue would be in the high single-digit millions. That is where the range below comes from. Every input in it is an assumption: none is drawn from a contract, a filing or a property record belonging to Qualley, which is why the range carries the lowest confidence grade this site awards.
The gap here is total rather than partial. Fashion houses do not publish what ambassadors are paid, Netflix does not publish what its leads are paid, and Mubi is a small distributor whose deal terms stay private; no property in her name has surfaced in a public record, and she has never filed a disclosure of any kind. Qualley is also early enough in a leading career that a correct figure for last year would be wrong by next year, since a single studio contract could move it by more than the width of the range. Until one real payment becomes public, what follows is an inference from the company she keeps rather than from her accounts, and should be read that way.
Confidence: Indicative – no fee, endorsement value or asset of Qualley’s own has ever been published, so this range is built from the assumptions set out above rather than from any reported figure of hers.
Qualley has no foundation of her own and her charitable activity has not been documented in detail. Her public image rests on the work: Maid in particular drew attention to domestic abuse and poverty, and the series was widely discussed for its depiction of the benefits system and low-wage work.
She is regarded as a performer willing to take physical and creative risks, a reputation reinforced by the dance-heavy Kenzo film and by the prosthetics-heavy demands of The Substance.
Qualley has not been involved in any significant legal dispute or public controversy. The scrutiny she attracts is largely about her family, as the daughter of a well-known actor, and about her marriage to a high-profile music producer, and neither has produced documented disputes.
Discussion of The Substance focused on its graphic imagery and its satire of beauty standards rather than on her personally.