Ellen Barkin has been busy lately selling off her family jewels. And by that we don't mean that Ellen Barkin has been involved in a grotesque trade of her penis and testes for cash – we mean actual jewels.
And Ellen Barkin hasn't been selling just any old jewels either – Ellen Barkin has been selling bucketfuls of crazy expensive jewels that her ex-husband Ron Perelman showered her with, presumably in a failed effort to persuade himself not to leave her. But this is a story where everyone emerges better off – Ron Perelman gets to wipe his slate clean, Ellen Barkin gets to think up ways of spending the $20 million that the jewel sale raised, and some lucky bastards get to swan about knowing that the expensive jewellery they're wearing was once worn by the woman who played Penny Priddy in The Adventures Of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension.
Ellen Barkin hasn't really made any great films in the last few years – and that's a trend that looks set to continue when the Ellen Barkin-starring Ocean's Thirteen is released next year. But, hey, it's not as if Ellen Barkin needs to make any decent films any more; she's just become insanely wealthy through auctioning off all the jewels her ex-husband gave her before they split up – $20 million richer, to be exact.
It's a probably-fictional story we all know only too well; boy meets girl, boy realises that girl is a Hollywood film star and – wracked with tremendous insecurity that she'll run off with an actor – showers her with expensive gifts thanks to his job as a Revlon billionaire, boy eventually gets bored of girl, boy leaves girl, girl sells all the gifts and spends the rest of her life swimming around a vault full of money like Scrooge McDuck. That, more or less, is possibly what might have happened between Sea Of Love star Ellen Barkin and ex-husband Ron Perelman.
Ron Perelman suddenly decided to leave Ellen Barkin after five years of marriage in January, so Ellen Barkin did what any self-respecting spurned wife and semi-retired actress would do in her position – she gave all the jewellery that Perelman had given her over the course of their courtship to auction house Christie's and told them to get as much money for them as she could. By and large, that's what happened, as E! Online reports:
Barkin, 52, gave Christie's the go-ahead to hawk 103 baubles ranging in type from dazzling rubies and sapphires to period diamonds and pearls in what was billed as a "Magnificent Jewels" firesale. Initial estimates put the Barkin castoffs – which included unique designs from such jewellery houses as Tiffany, Van Cleef & Arpels, and JAR (acclaimed designer Joel Arthur Rosenthal) – between $12 million and $15 million. But the jewellery ended up exceeding all expectations, tallying $20.3 million. According to Rahul Kdakia, head of Christie's jewellery department, the total represents "the highest single-owner jewellery sale of the past 15 years in the U.S. and also places it among the top four ever worldwide." "It was an absolutely packed, packed room with a lot of buzz. It was an electric sale," said Christie's rep Kate Swan.
This whole celebrity auction thing looks like the easiest way around to make money. Cher recently made millions of dollars flogging off her old crap and even William Shatner can raise thousands of dollars by selling things that he's pushed through his penis-hole. Ask yourself this, though – just because Ellen Barkin is newly free and single, about to become properly famous again and has just become richer than her wildest dreams, is she happy? What do you think you idiot? She's rich. Rich!
Read more:
Barkin unloads family jewels – E! Online
[story by Stuart Heritage]