Recently, Twisters hit theaters and was a major success. This summer blockbuster is more of a spiritual sequel than anything else, but for many of us, it re-ignited our passion for the original film. We went back to the original Twister and had just one question while the credits rolled: whatever happened to Jami Gertz?
In that movie, she played the fiancée of Bill Paxton’s storm chaser, and Helen Hunt played Paxton’s previous spouse. While most remember this film for Paxton and Hunt (and their chemistry as electric as any lightning storm), Gertz steals almost every scene as a beautiful therapist in over her head and surrounded by natural disasters.
Weirdly enough, Gertz has been off the pop culture radar for the last 20 years. Just what has she been up to? Keep reading to discover what Twister star Jami Gertz has been busy doing!
Her misunderstood marriage story
Jami Gertz is always the first to point out that people get her marriage story backward. She’s married to Tony Ressler, someone who co-owns the Atlanta Hawks and is worth over $11 billion dollars. This has led people to make two mistaken assumptions about Gertz: that she married for money and that she stopped acting simply because her husband is so wealthy.
However, when they fell in love and got married, he actually didn’t make much money and she was a Hollywood star. As she later told The Hollywood Reporter, “I made more money — way more money — than Tony when I met him.” Continuing, she said, “I paid for our first house. I paid for our first vacation. I married him because I fell in love with him.”
Family life changed her perspective
This Twister star actually married her husband in 1989, seven years before that storm-chasing movie came out. By the time Jami Gertz was filming alongside Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt, she had two children, and she had significant difficulty balancing life as an actor and life as a mother.
She later said as much to the Arkansas Democratic Gazette. “I had a 3-year-old and a 6-week-old and I was in the middle of cornfields in the middle of Iowa, and there was no way that I could even get back to base camp where they were,” she said. “And I barely saw them for about four months.”
Gertz made these comments in 2012. And while she would continue taking on certain acting projects afterward, it was already clear that she was beginning to think about acting less so she could focus more on her family.
From being a sitcom queen to a producer
If you’re reading this, chances are you don’t really remember seeing Jami Gertz in much after the 1996 film Twister. However, she kept acting, sometimes in surprising ways. For example, from 2002 to 2006, she starred in the sitcom Still Standing. It’s possible that this was the actor’s way of exploring what might have been. You see, one of the wildest facts about her career is that Gertz was offered the role of Rachel on Friends, and Jennifer Aniston didn’t get the gig until Gertz passed on it.
A few years later, Gertz decided to take on a very different Hollywood role: that of a producer. This was partially a selfish endeavor, as the actor wanted to produce some of the projects that she acted in. However, her production company (Lime Orchard Productions) is most known for a movie she didn’t star in (A Better Life). And after five years and millions of dollars in losses, Gertz gave up on being a producer.
Gertz unexpectedly became a sports icon
These days, Jami Gertz still appears on camera quite a bit, but in the last place you’d expect. She previously guest starred in some fun shows like Modern Family, but she is now more of a sports icon. That’s because her husband has been the co-owner of the Atlanta Hawks since 2015, and she has gotten very involved with the team since then.
Her husband Tony Ressler is a huge basketball fan, and after purchasing the team, Gerz has gotten more and more into it. That passion has paid off because Ressler is notoriously very shy. Therefore, his wife uses her extensive Hollywood experiences to talk to various media outlets and speak at various NBA experiences on behalf of the team. Just like that, this major celeb became the face of a basketball team.
Embracing life as a philanthropist
When she isn’t helping her husband’s basketball team succeed, Jami Gertz is busy helping just about everybody else. She’s worth a cool $3 billion herself, and she and Tony Ressler frequently donate money to important charities. They don’t just donate a little either, as this couple has become quite famous for their generosity.
Forbes once named this couple one of the “30 most generous celebrities,” and it’s not hard to see why. Over the years, they have donated $150,000 to prostate cancer research, $5 million to Black-owned businesses, and over $10 million to assorted charities (this last was in 2012 alone). As fans, it’s nice to know that Jami Gertz is just as generous and kind behind-the-scenes as her awesome characters have always been onscreen.