Many wealthy people wrestle with how to avoid raising spoiled, entitled brats. When Ben Affleck‘s 13-year-old son, Samuel, showed interest in a pair of $6,000 sneakers, the “Air” actor used a classic line to give him a reality check.
“You like those because they’re expensive,” the movie star said as Samuel admired a pair of Dior Air Jordan 1 shoes at the Got Sole sneaker convention earlier this month. The comments surfaced in a video posted to the Got Sole Instagram account.
When his son protested that he’d always liked how they look, Affleck quipped, “That’s a lot of lawns you gotta mow there.”
The “Gone Girl” lead and “Argo” director said in an “Access Hollywood” interview this week that telling someone they’d need to mow a lawn meant “all of a sudden they don’t want those shoes anymore.”
“There’s always some grift why I need to be buying,” Affleck continued. “I’m like, bruh, you do not need $1,000 shoes. He’s like, ‘We have the money.’ I’m like, ‘I have the money — you’re broke.'”
The two-time Oscar winner isn’t the first celebrity to issue a reminder that their vast fortunes belong to them, and not their children, for fear they will take wealth for granted.
Along similar lines, Warren Buffett wrote last year that “hugely wealthy parents should leave their children enough so they can do anything but not enough that they can do nothing.”
The basketball icon Shaquille O’Neal said on the “Earn Your Leisure” podcast in 2021 that he frequently told his kids: “We ain’t rich. I’m rich.”
The former Los Angeles Lakers center added that if one of them wanted him to invest in a business, they’d have to present it to him, and he’d decide whether it made financial sense. “I’m not giving you nothing,” he said.
Similarly, the comedy legend Jerry Seinfeld told Kevin Hart during a “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee” episode that if his children ever asked him whether they were rich, he replied: “I am. You’re not.”
The “Rush Hour” star and comedian Chris Tucker made a similar joke in his “Chris Tucker Live” standup special for Netflix in 2015. He quipped that his family members quit their jobs after learning he was making millions of dollars a year and mimicked them chanting: “We rich! We rich!”
Tucker’s response was: “Y’all ain’t rich, I’m rich. Y’all better get your jobs back before it’s too late.”
In pop culture, a similar tension played out over three decades ago by the fictional Huxtable family in the sitcom “The Cosby Show.”
“None of this would have happened if we weren’t so rich,” complains Vanessa Huxtable in one episode.
“Let me get something straight, OK,” her father says. “Your mother and I are rich. You have nothing.”
The comedian Chris Rock has taken a different view from other celebrities. In one routine, he called his children “rich and spoiled,” contrasting their upbringing with his. “I want them to be lost every time they’re in a hood, OK?” he said. “My kids went to the best schools on Earth, OK? My kids speak multiple languages, OK?”
Correction: March 17, 2025 — A photo caption in an earlier version of this story mistakenly attributed comments by Chris Tucker to Chris Rock.
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