Jennifer Tilly Net Worth 2026 – Career Earnings, Age & Poker Bio

Jennifer Tilly is an Academy Award-nominated actress who won a World Series of Poker bracelet in 2005 and has been playing high-stakes poker ever since. Her net worth is most commonly estimated at $40 million, though very little of that fortune was built at the poker table.

She has $1,056,898 in tracked live tournament earnings across 63 cashes, one WSOP bracelet from the 2005 Ladies No-Limit Hold’em event, and a place in the Women in Poker Hall of Fame. She was inducted in the Class of 2022.

The televised cash games tell a harder story. Publicly tracked broadcast data has her down $1,820,979 across 125 recorded episodes. That figure covers streamed games only and is not a lifetime profit and loss.

We separate what is verifiable from what is estimated, because most Jennifer Tilly net worth figures carry no disclosed methodology. Every figure is attributed to its source with the limits stated, and anything we cannot verify is flagged rather than filled in. She joins our directory of poker player profiles.

As of 2026, Jennifer Tilly’s net worth is not publicly confirmed. The figure published most often is $40 million, sitting at the top of a range that starts around $25 million on older estimates. No primary source, and no statement from Tilly, supports any of them.

What makes her case unusual is where the money is thought to come from. The largest single component has nothing to do with acting and nothing to do with poker. It traces back to a divorce settled in 1993.

Net worth estimates and why they vary

The $40 million figure traces to CelebrityNetWorth.com, which refreshed its Tilly page in March 2026. Entertainment coverage on Yahoo and IMDb carried the same number through 2025. Older cached pages still show $25 million.

None of these sites discloses a methodology. Higher figures circulate as well, but the pages carrying them also credit Tilly with an Academy Award win for a film that does not exist and print the wrong date of birth. Those numbers are left out here.

Set against that, here is what each stream can actually be checked against.

How much of Jennifer Tilly’s fortune comes from poker?

Very little. Her tracked live tournament record stands at $1,056,898 across 63 cashes, built up over roughly two decades. Against a $40 million estimate, that is under 3% of the total.

That figure is also gross. Buy-ins, travel, taxes and any staking splits come out of it, and none of those are public. The televised cash games run in the other direction, with tracked broadcast sessions showing a net loss.

On tournament results alone she still outranks almost every actor who has ever picked up cards, as our breakdown of where Hollywood names really rank sets out.

What is Jennifer Tilly’s Simpsons royalty deal?

Tilly receives 30% of the net proceeds from Sam Simon’s Simpsons stake, under a divorce settlement finalised in 1993. She married Simon in 1984 and the couple separated in 1991. Simon died in 2015.

Simon co-created The Simpsons in 1989 while the two were married, which is why his stake counted as marital property. She does not own 30% of the show itself.

The arrangement was rumoured for years and confirmed after his death, when Tilly and the estate agreed a way for the payments to reach her directly from Fox.

The published working uses a 2023 Simpsons income of $30,479,470, which puts her 30% share at roughly $9.1 million for that year. Reported annual figures of $6 million to $10 million are derived estimates rather than filed numbers.

Tilly described the difference it made on a Los Angeles Magazine podcast in November 2021.

“I used to do a lot of movies because the roof was leaking, or to pay for the plumbing, and now I don’t have to.”

The components are visible. The total is not. One stream sits in a public database, one is estimated from third-party working, and the rest are unverified.

Tilly was born Jennifer Ellen Chan on 16 September 1958 in Harbor City, Los Angeles. Her mother Patricia was a schoolteacher and former stage actress, her father Harry Chan. The couple divorced when she was five.

She grew up in British Columbia and later Victoria, then took a BA in Theatre at Stephens College.

Acting ran in the family: her younger sister Meg Tilly won a Golden Globe for her role in the 1985 film Agnes of God. Steve and Rebecca complete the four Chan siblings.

How did Jennifer Tilly get into poker?

A film started it. Tilly traces her interest to the 1989 comedy Let It Ride, which led to home games, some of them with Sam Simon. Competitive tournament play followed around 2003 and 2004.

Laak is widely credited with pushing her towards competitive events. Accounts differ on exactly when she took that step, with both years cited across interviews and databases.

The timing put her in the middle of poker’s biggest growth spurt. Televised coverage was expanding fast in the wake of the boom Chris Moneymaker started at the 2003 WSOP Main Event.

The relationship that shaped her poker life began at a table as well. Tilly met Phil Laak at the 2004 WPT Invitational at the Commerce Casino, an event Laak won. They have been together ever since and have never married.

Tilly’s tracked live tournament earnings total $1,056,898 across 63 recorded cashes, per The Hendon Mob. Her best live cash is $158,335. Her record spans WSOP events, WPT festivals, Aussie Millions and the PokerGO Tour.

Hendon Mob is the source for every figure below unless stated otherwise. All amounts are gross payouts before buy-ins, travel and taxes.

Top verified career cashes

Seven rows, not ten. Four further significant results are confirmed by the World Poker Tour but carry no primary-verified prize figure, so they appear below without amounts rather than with numbers we cannot stand behind.

Has Jennifer Tilly won anything outside women’s events?

Yes. She won a side event at the 2010 Bellagio Cup VI and another at the 2006 Five Diamond World Poker Classic, both open-field and both confirmed by the World Poker Tour. Reported figures for each vary across secondary sources, so none is published here.

Her best World Poker Tour Main Tour finish is 12th at the 2008 LA Poker Classic. She has no Main Tour title: the 2010 and 2006 wins were side events inside WPT-branded festivals.

The open-field record also includes WSOP deep runs in 2013 and 2015, both in the table above. The idea that her results come only from women-only fields does not survive contact with the data.

Jennifer Tilly’s WSOP record

One bracelet, from 2005. WSOP.com credits her with 24 cashes and $486,633 in WSOP earnings, although that cash count folds in a 2014 WPT LA Poker Classic line.

Why hasn’t Tilly cashed at the WSOP since 2019?

Her last WSOP cash came on 12 July 2019. She has not stopped playing: she entered the 2026 Main Event and reached Day 2 without cashing.

The shift is one of focus rather than retirement. Most of her table time now goes to televised cash games, which produce no tournament results to track.

Where Tilly ranks on the all-time lists

Her peak position on the all-time money list was 940th. Current placings move constantly as other players cash, so a live rank dates quickly and is not published here.

The more stable marker is the women’s all-time money list, where she sits 76th. For a player whose primary career is in film, a seven-figure tournament record built over two decades is a real one.

Two titles inside four months turned a recreational player into a poker name. The first came in June at the Rio, the second in September at a card room in Bell Gardens.

This section covers what happened. The figures live in the section above.

Has Jennifer Tilly won a WSOP bracelet?

Yes, one. She won Event #26 at the 2005 World Series of Poker, the $1,000 Ladies No-Limit Hold’em event, beating a field of 601 entrants for a prize pool of $546,910.

The field was a record for the event at that point. Sources differ on whether the final day fell on 27 or 29 June, and WSOP.com is the anchor used here.

A bracelet remains poker’s most recognised prize, and the list of holders runs to thousands. Only a fraction reach the sport’s marquee title, tracked across every Main Event champion since 1970.

Who else was at the 2005 Ladies final table?

Beth Shak finished 8th, the first of her two WSOP final tables. She went on to build a tournament record of her own and became a familiar face in televised poker.

The Ladies event has changed shape since. The 2026 edition drew 1,475 entries, more than double the field Tilly beat, and produced a first-time bracelet winner in the player who won the Ladies title this year.

Twenty-one years separate the two wins. The prize pool has grown from $546,910 to roughly $1.3 million over that stretch.

The event began as a Seven-Card Stud tournament and switched to no-limit hold’em in 2001. Tilly’s win sits at the midpoint of that growth curve.

What was WPT Ladies’ Night III?

A televised invitational special, staged as the concluding event of Legends of Poker 2005 at the Bicycle Casino in Bell Gardens, California. Tilly beat Lilly Elviro heads-up to win it in September 2005.

The prize was not cash. She took a $25,000 seat into the 2006 WPT Championship, plus a commemorative pink chip set produced for breast cancer awareness.

That distinction matters for how the result is counted. It was an invitational, not a World Poker Tour Main Tour event, so it carries no tour title and no tracked prize money.

Why the 2005 double mattered

Poker was at its televised peak, and Tilly already had a face audiences recognised. A bracelet plus a WPT broadcast win gave her something rarer: a result that stood up when the cameras were switched off.

It also set the terms of the argument that has followed her ever since. Both 2005 titles came in women-only fields, which is why the open-field record in the previous section carries the weight it does.

Tilly has spent more time in televised cash games than in tournaments for well over a decade. The tracked record across those broadcasts runs to 125 episodes and 350 hours since January 2009.

All figures in this section come from publicly tracked broadcast cash game data. They cover recorded games only.

Is Jennifer Tilly a winning cash game player?

On tracked broadcasts she is down $1,820,979, an hourly rate of roughly -$5,203. That headline figure hides a split result rather than a uniform one.

The stream-by-stream breakdown

One show accounts for more than the entire loss. Strip out High Stakes Poker and the remaining tracked games are close to level.

She is a clear winner on Poker After Dark, PokerStars Live and PartyPoker Live. The honest read is a player who struggles in one specific lineup and holds her own elsewhere.

High Stakes Poker Season 15

Season 15 was filmed in November 2024 at the PokerGO Studio inside ARIA and aired on 23 December 2025. Tilly appeared in episodes 12 to 14.

Stakes ran at $200/$400 with a $500 big blind ante. The lineup included Kevin Hart on his debut, Antonio Esfandiari, Andrew Robl, Sam Kiki and Nik Airball among the nosebleed regulars.

The $1.1 million four-runout pot

In November 2025, on a one-night ClubWPT Gold special edition at the PokerGO Studio, straddles climbed to $16,000. The pot that followed reached $1,126,500.

Tilly held K♠ Q♠ and Doug Polk turned up king-queen too, his offsuit with K♥ Q♣. Santhosh Suvarna had A♣ 7♥.

The flop came 5♣ J♣ 10♣. Tilly and Polk both flopped straight draws, Suvarna the nut flush draw, and Tilly committed her last $154,000 or so.

The players agreed to run it four times. Suvarna held roughly 70% equity and took three of the four runouts.

It falls outside the ten largest pots ever televised, a ranking now headed by eight-figure hands from Triton.

The tracked broadcast data gives an unusually clear read on how Tilly plays. Across 350 hours she shows a VPIP of 50% against a PFR of 23%.

In plain terms, she enters about half of all hands and raises with fewer than a quarter of them. That is a loose-passive profile, wide and call-heavy by modern standards.

One caveat matters. The sample is broadcast hands only, and televised games self-select for action, so the true figures across all her play are probably tighter.

Defining traits at the table

Five characteristics show up consistently across her televised appearances.

Is Jennifer Tilly actually good at poker?

The honest answer is that both sides of the argument hold. She has a WSOP bracelet, two open-field WPT side event wins and a Hall of Fame place, none of which are given away.

Against that sits a 50% VPIP, a seven-figure tracked loss on broadcast cash games and a two-decade tournament total that many full-time professionals pass in a single year.

The fairer framing is that she is a strong recreational player who competes above her level by choice. Anyone measuring her against how winning cash players think is applying the wrong yardstick.

The poker face and the psychic claim

Tilly has described her table demeanour in the same terms for years. Her method is to feel the same regardless of what she holds.

“The key to a good poker face is behaving ‘as if.’ When I’m bluffing, I pretend I have pocket aces, and that makes me feel serene.”

In the same interview she claimed a psychic ability, saying it helps her at poker and when she needs her boyfriend to pick something up. It is offered lightly rather than as a serious strategic claim.

She was also nominated for the Spirit of Poker Living Legend Award in 2014, a recognition of contribution to the game rather than results.

The Patrik Antonius hand

Her most replayed television moment came on Poker After Dark, Season 1. At blinds of 200/400 she raised the button to 1,200 with pocket jacks and Patrik Antonius defended across the felt with 10♥ 8♥.

The flop of 10-J-7 gave Tilly top set. Antonius check-called, and both players checked the king on the turn.

The river brought a second king, filling Tilly up. Antonius checked, and she checked behind with a full house.

The hand is discussed constantly because the missed value is obvious in hindsight. It is a reputational moment rather than an ethical one, and it has followed her for close to two decades.

The crossover comparison

Tilly was the original crossover player, arriving with an audience already in place. That path is now well travelled, most visibly by Alexandra Botez and her crossover audience.

The difference is the bracelet. Tilly won hers against a full Ladies field before the crossover route existed as a career, and that result still separates her from most who followed.

Tilly was inducted into the Women in Poker Hall of Fame with the Class of 2022. The selection was announced on 14 November 2022 and the ceremony followed on Wednesday 14 December at the PokerGO Studio in Las Vegas.

She posted her reaction the day after the announcement.

“I am proud and honored to be inducted into the Women’s Poker Hall of Fame.”

Who else was in the Class of 2022?

Four women went in together, the largest class since the Hall’s earliest years. The size was down to close voting and to the 2020 cycle being skipped during the pandemic.

Going in alongside Vanessa Selbst and her hedge fund exit put Tilly in company with a player whose tournament record dwarfs her own. The Hall weighs contribution to the game as heavily as results.

Where Tilly sits on the women’s all-time money list

She currently ranks 76th. The more interesting part is where she used to sit.

Her own Hendon Mob biography still describes her as 27th, and in a 2015 interview she put herself at around number 30. Neither is wrong for its moment.

Her tournament total has been static since March 2023. She has not fallen down the list because she started losing, but because the women’s game kept growing around her.

That growth is the real story, and it is visible across the women shaping the modern game. A total that placed a player in the top 30 a decade ago now places her outside the top 70.

What Tilly’s bracelet meant in 2005

The Ladies event she won drew 601 entrants. The 1977 edition drew 93, and the 2026 edition drew 1,475.

Her win sits at the midpoint of that curve, at the moment the televised boom was pulling recreational players into the game in numbers. A famous face winning it put the event in front of an audience that had never watched poker.

That is the contribution the Hall recognised. It was never presented as a claim that she is among the strongest players of her generation.

The visibility argument

Tilly has spent two decades in televised poker at a time when very few women appeared in those lineups at all. Recognition of that kind is hard to measure and easy to underrate.

Others have carried it into different rooms, including Maria Ho behind the commentary desk. Tilly stayed in the player seat throughout, which is its own kind of consistency.

Tilly has more than 120 screen credits stretching back to 1984. The poker audience knows her from the felt, but the acting career is the larger and older body of work.

It is also where most of the misinformation about her originates. Several high-ranking pages credit her with an Academy Award win and give her birthday as 16 June.

Did Jennifer Tilly win an Oscar?

No. She was nominated for Best Supporting Actress at the 67th Academy Awards, announced on 14 February 1995, for playing Olive Neal in Bullets Over Broadway.

She lost to her co-star Dianne Wiest, who took the award for the same film. Any page claiming a win, particularly for a film you cannot find, is wrong.

Two years later she drew strong reviews as Violet in the Wachowskis’ Bound, opposite Gina Gershon. That pairing of a mainstream nomination and a cult classic defines the first half of her career.

The Chucky franchise and Tiffany Valentine

Her longest-running role is Tiffany Valentine, introduced in Bride of Chucky in 1998 and carried through the sequels into the television series.

The Chucky series was cancelled after three seasons, announced in late September 2024. Tilly confirmed it herself on X on 25 September.

She said during 2025 that further Tiffany material is in development. Nothing has been given a release date.

Television and voice work

She continues as Bonnie Swanson on Family Guy, a role reportedly worth $100,000 per episode. She reprised Celia Mae for the third season of Monsters at Work in 2025.

She also joined season 14 of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills as a friend of the cast.

Phil Laak and personal life

Tilly has been with Phil Laak since 2004. They are not married and never have been, which is the single most repeated error about her in poker coverage.

“I’ve been with my man for 20 years… He’s a poker player.”

Her earlier marriage to Sam Simon ran from 1984 to their separation in 1991. That relationship produced the settlement that underpins most estimates of her wealth, covered earlier in this profile.

She lives in Los Angeles. Her date of birth is 16 September 1958, not June.

As of 2026, Tilly is still playing and still being booked. Her recent activity sits mostly in televised games and festival appearances rather than tournament results.

What is Jennifer Tilly doing in 2026?

Playing, mostly on camera. The WSOP 2026 Main Event run ended on Day 2, which is her most recent competitive appearance of note.

She also turned up on Phil Hellmuth on his own home game, filmed around September 2025 and aired in March 2026.

Her tournament total has not moved since March 2023. That is a function of where she is choosing to play rather than a step back from the game.

Where to follow her results

Tournament cashes appear on The Hendon Mob within days of an event finishing. Poker results and recaps as they happen are covered in our latest poker news and results.

This profile is reviewed after each WSOP and whenever a tracked broadcast appearance changes the figures. Jennifer Tilly stories are tagged below:

This player profile separates verifiable facts from estimates and public claims. We cannot accurately calculate any player’s net worth, but we aim to publish transparent, verifiable information.

How we handle net worth

We do not treat any net worth figure as fact. Third-party estimates are reported with their source and caveats. Where no credible methodology is disclosed, we say so.

Tilly’s $25 million to $40 million range comes from celebrity biography sites and entertainment coverage. We present it as an estimate, not a confirmed figure.

How we report earnings

Tournament earnings come from The Hendon Mob, which tracks live results only. WSOP-specific totals come from WSOP.com.

All amounts are gross payouts. Buy-ins, travel, taxes and staking arrangements are not public and are not deducted.

How we handle broadcast cash game data

Cash game figures in this profile come from publicly tracked broadcast data, compiled episode by episode from games that were filmed or streamed. We do not link that source.

Those numbers capture recorded games only. A player showing a negative broadcast figure may still be a lifetime winner away from the cameras, and the reverse is equally possible.

Known discrepancies

Her 2005 bracelet payout appears as both $158,335 and $158,625 across databases. We publish the Hendon Mob figure.

Sources also differ on whether the 2005 Ladies event finished on 27 or 29 June, and on whether she turned to tournaments in 2003 or 2004. Both are flagged in the relevant sections.

Her Hendon Mob biography still describes her as 27th on the women’s all-time money list. That reflects an earlier moment, not her current position.

The sources below were used in researching this profile. Social media links are included for verification and attribution.