By any measure, Sarah Jessica Parker is a multimillionaire. But you wouldn’t know it judging by how much she likes scooping up swag and freebies.
On the set of her most recent movie, Parker kept 12 pairs of the same Swarovski Crystalline cocktail glasses used in a wedding scene, an on-set source told The Post. At $390 a set, that’s 24 cocktail glasses worth a total of $4,680.
Like a broke freelance model stuffing shoes into her purse backstage at a fashion show, Parker held onto some of the $10 million wardrobe she wore in the movie, too. The $9,000 jeweled Pucci gown she’s sporting in one of the two movie posters was gifted to her by the star-struck fashion label, on-set sources said. The actress also wanted a pair of knee-high metallic Rene Caovilla boots she dons in the film, so movie staff had to beseech the Italian company to give them to her, sources said. (Parker’s publicist Ina Treciokas told The Post the actress never asked for anything from the set, but was given the Pucci dress.)
Parker, who earned a cool $15 million for her appearance in the flick (not including the residuals she will make as executive producer), could have easily written a check instead of putting everyone through the pain of filling her closet for free. So why doesn’t she?
The answer starts with her upbringing. Growing up in Cincinnati as a small child, Parker lived on welfare and was one of eight kids. She got free lunch at school. When her family moved to New York to further the young actress’ career, she performed on Broadway, most notably in the title role of “Annie,” a show she churned out six days a week for a year. In real life, she was singing for her supper as the breadwinner for her brothers and sisters, an experience she never forgot.
“That is why I have such a weird relationship with money,” Parker said in a 2000 interview with the New York Times. “And it is why I can be profligate and super-frugal.”
This from the woman who made Manolo Blahnik a household name and plays the most famous shopaholic in history.
Still, in her personal life she has said she continued her fiscal conservatism even after she became a success in hit films from the ’80s and ’90s such as “Footloose,” “Girls Just Want To Have Fun” and “Honeymoon in Vegas,” and after she married fellow multimillionaire actor Matthew Broderick in 1997.
The couple kept their money separate, Parker said in the Times article, adding that there was “no reason for me to know how much money he has.” And perhaps Parker, having shared her money with her family for years, wanted to keep her earnings all to herself.
Things may have changed since Parker and Broderick had kids — James Wilkie is 7, and twins Marion and Tabitha are almost a year old — but SJP clearly still has money issues, despite her enormous wealth.
The actress has spun her most famous money-spending character, Carrie Bradshaw, into an all-purpose lifestyle brand and cash machine. Many celebrities, such as Jennifer Lopez, have turned themselves into brands, but what’s unprecedented about Parker is how she pushes her personal products in her film work.
The actress is using the film as an opportunity to pimp out the Halston Heritage brand, for which she was named “chief creative officer” in January. She cannily made sure that the white Halston Heritage dress she’s wearing in the movie’s other poster became available on net-a-porter.com as soon as the image was released. So if you have $325, you can dress just like Carrie — and conveniently funnel money back to SJP’s coffers. Five of the 41 looks worn by Parker in the film are also by the label’s Heritage line.
Today, every aspect of Carrie’s life is reduced to a vignette that can be monetized: Going to the Gym (sip on Lipton Sparkling diet green tea, an official sponsor of the new movie!), Having Cocktails with Girlfriends (try a specialized cocktail from Skyy, the movie’s “official vodka”!), Getting Married (Swarovski paid to be featured prominently in the film) and, of course, Working On Laptop, Staring Wistfully Out the Window (Hewlett Packard partnered with the movie so its laptops would be featured, and SJP will appear in the computer company’s ads, of course). As the New York Times put it in a recent blogpost, “What Next, the Official Salad Dressing?”
A lot of people would call that good business. Others would call it grasping. Why does someone so rich need so many paychecks? In 2009, Vanity Fair listed Parker at No. 24 on its Top Hollywood Earners list, estimating her income to be $24 million that year. That figure did not include the millions she makes from her product endorsements (she’s the face of Garnier), her TV production work or her self-branded perfumes.
She’s launched six scents in the last five years. The first, Lovely, was accompanied by a flurry of fawning press detailing how SJP is a true perfumer, on par with the famous “noses” in France who dedicate their lives to the trade. Another fragrance is called, appropriately, Covet.
Her most recent fragrance, “SJP NYC,” is of course timed to the release of her new movie, and appears in advertisements for the film. Its scent is meant to invoke who else but Carrie Bradshaw.
But the actress won’t admit she’s doing any of it for the cash. “None of the decisions have been mercenary,” she sniffed in a Forbes interview about her branding and film work. “I have chosen to be ignorant on returns or numbers. I just don’t want to think about it.”
And yet she continues to make money-spinning products and films — even when they’re a critical flop. Since her HBO series ended in 2004, Parker has starred in a lackluster movie nearly every year, including “The Family Stone” (2005), “Failure To Launch” (2006) with Matthew McConaughey, “Spinning Into Butter” (2007) and the disastrous “Did You Hear About the Morgans?” (2009) with Hugh Grant. Every one of these movies, with the possible exception of “Failure To Launch,” was a box-office failure.
In 2007, she designed an ultra-low-priced clothing line, Bitten, for national discount chain Steve & Barry’s. But that also went belly up after the company filed for bankruptcy.
Even when Parker tries to seem relatable and real, she fails. This year, she appeared on an episode of NBC’s “Who Do You Think You Are?” which traces the genealogy of star guests. Parker played her part, looking on in wide-eyed wonder as she discovered that one of her relatives was part of the Salem witch trials. What’s more, because of union rules, she got paid for her appearance. (Treciokas said no contract was negotiated and Parker’s fee was the minimum required by a union show.)
Not content with all her millions, Parker’s now trying to get a slice of reality TV, producing the Bravo show “American Artist,” which will feature up-and-coming artists, and an HBO project, “Washingtonienne,” about a real-life Capitol Hill assistant who wrote a secret sex blog. Call it Carrie Bradshaw in DC, or, more simply, “Cash and Carrie.”
To be sure, finding work after 40 — Parker is 45 — is hard for actresses, which is probably one of the reasons she’s dipping her perfectly manicured fingers into so many honey pots.
But when will it all be enough? She’s socked away millions, owns a townhouse in the West Village, just bought a third Hamptons home (for $5.8 million), and shares all of “the burden” with her independently rich hubby.
Their three children will be cocooned in wealth; retirement won’t be a problem.
“I remember my childhood as Dickensian. I remember being poor,” Parker told the Times.
But who knew that Parker, who endured a young hard-knock life, would turn out to be such a real-life, modern-day Scrooge?