Liesel Matthews graced our screens as a childThe actress, however, has little chance of surviving in the film industry due to the fact that Matthews comes from a very wealthy family. She is one of the members of the famous Pritzker family which controls the Hyatt hotel chains. over $15 billion. She appeared in just three films before leaving the industry to get involved in other pursuits, primarily ‘shock investing’. Here’s everything you need to know about the heiress.
Liesel Matthews Bio
Liesel Matthews was born on March 14, 1984 in Chicago, Illinois to the wealthy family of Robert Pritzker and his wife Irene (née Dryburgh). She attended New Trier High School, a four-year public high school just outside of Chicago, where she graduated in 2002.
However, before her high school years, the young Liesel Matthews was already interested in acting. At the age of 9, she starred as Scout in a Chicago production of the play, To Kill a Mockingbird and as a result her talents were discovered. She would go on to play the titular character in the 1995 film A Little Princess which received two Oscar nominations. Two years later, in 1997, she played the president’s daughter (Harrison Ford’s character) in the thriller Air Force One. In 2002, she appeared in Explosion which would become her final film role.
Liesel Matthews had immediately after high school went to Columbia University where she hoped to continue acting, but the lawsuit she filed against her father and eleven cousins would change the course of her life and lead her down a path. different.
Matthews in 2002 discovered that her father and cousins had meddled with a trust fund set up for her and her brother, and as a result, they filed a $6 billion lawsuit against them. Liesel and his brother earned $900 million from the action, bringing his personal fortune to over $500 million. Since then, she has devoted her time to investing money not only for financial gain, but also for the benefit of society and the environment.
The family of Liesel Matthews
Matthews’ parents who had first met at a Pritzker-owned Hyatt hotel in Australia, where his mother, worked, were to divorce in 1989, exactly 9 years after their marriage in 1980. Liesel was not the only product of their union because they had another child, Matthew, Pritzker, born a few years before Liesel.
Liesel Matthews has Jewish roots from his paternal line and is of Australian descent from his maternal roots. At birth, she was named Liesel Anne Pritzker in homage to the Sound of Music character Liesl von Trapp who was the first daughter of the von Trapp children in the film.
After her parents divorced, her mother, Irene, was granted custody of her and her brother Matthew, and soon her father’s distaste for her mother would have a ripple effect on the family, forcing Liesel and her brother to get away from their father.
His mother would later remarry a man named JamesJ. Bagley and consequently Liesel changed his name to Liesel Pritzker-Bagley. When she chose to use her new name for her stage name, her father was upset and threatened not to play the role on Air Force One. As a result, Liesel chose the stage name Liesel Matthews – in honor of his older brother.
From their father’s first marriage to a certain Audrey Gilbert Pritzker, Liesel and his brother Matthews have three half-siblings namely; Jennifer (born as James, is the first transgender billionaire), Linda and Karen.
The Pritzker family is related to a certain Russian émigré Nicolas Pritzker who created what would become one of America’s renowned family empires. His grandfather is the late AN Pritzker who died in 1986. He was a financier and industrialist. The Pritzker family would gain huge ground in America thanks to Liesel’s father, Robert, and brother, Jay Pritzker. Together they began to develop the Hyatt hotel chain and founded the holding company Marmon Group in 1953.
The Pritzker family has long been on Forbes’ list of America’s wealthiest families, with at least 11 of its members on the Forbes 400.
Other Facts About the American Actress
– After winning the lawsuit against his family in 2004, Liesel Matthews sought to escape the ensuing popularity and fled to Dharamsala, India. There, she came to discover the abject poverty of the people, giving birth to her lifelong passion for philanthropy and social entrepreneurship.
– Matthews’ acting interest waned after his three-and-a-half-month stay in India. Upon her return to New York, she enrolled in a cooking school and finished her studies at Columbia.
– She gave her mother, Irene, $50 million of her fortune to start an education-based foundation known as the IDP Foundation, Inc.
— Liesel Matthews is married to Ian Simmons, heir to his family’s Erie Canal. According to Forbes, he is worth more than $100 million.
– Matthews is a staunch supporter of the wealth tax controversy she told the BBC in 2019 that one of the ways wealthy people like her can contribute to society was to tax more.