Miles Teller's journey as an actor is the embodiment of what you would call an up-and-down career. His achievements undoubtedly speak for themselves. At 34, he has already become a household name in Hollywood, thanks to his work in films like War Dogs, Thank You for Your Service and The Divergent series. Perhaps most significantly, his lead role in Damien Chazelle's Whiplash helped to guide the film to five Academy Award nominations, winning two.
On the other hand, Teller has often also found himself in situations of extreme adversity, of his own making or otherwise. He escaped narrowly with his life after a car accident when he was 20, which also left his face permanently scarred. This has sometimes made it difficult for him to land roles.
He has also developed a reputation of being somewhat obnoxious, and his 'bad boy' tendencies have gotten him in hot water occasionally. One example is when he was arrested for public intoxication in 2017. At that point in time, he was estimated to be worth around $15 million. While his troubles have caused that figure to fall, he can be thankful that the decline has not been that significant.
Updated on August 8, 2022: Miles Teller starred in the highly anticipated sequel Top Gun: Maverick earlier this year, rocketing his Hollywood career back into high-gear. He also took center stage in a Netflix original film Spiderhead in June and has three more films currently in the works. According to Wealthy Gorilla, as of this month Teller holds a net worth of $14 million.
Miles Teller Has Had A Non-Stop Career
Teller's career was pretty non-stop in the early to mid-2010s. His first movie role was alongside Nicole Kidman and Aaron Eckhart in Rabbit Hole which was in 2010. He featured in four more films in the three years that followed, before his biggest role in Whiplash in 2014. That same year, he debuted his detested character Peter Hayes in Divergent, a role he would reprise in the film's subsequent sequels in 2015 and 2016.
Around this time, he missed out on a role that might have given his career a completely different outlook. His Whiplash mentor, Chazelle, was working on his next big project -- the musical La La Land. He had already penciled in Teller as the lead, alongside Emma Watson. The actress dropped out, however, because the film clashed with her shooting schedule for Bill Condon's musical, Beauty and the Beast.
Teller was dropped in more mysterious circumstances, with the only communication he received coming from his agent. He was informed that the director had changed his mind and no longer felt that he was 'creatively right for the project.'
Did Miles Teller Demand More Money?
Being so unceremoniously dropped from that musical project is something that clearly rankled with him. There were rumors circulating back then that claimed he had been overlooked for the part because he demanded more money than was sensible. He was at pains to vehemently refute those claims when he sat down to speak to Vulture magazine a few years later.
"[The press] said I was offered four million to do it and turned it down because I wanted six," he said. "I'm pretty sure a talent agency planted that story to try and turn me against my own agent — it was absolutely false. The money side of it was fine. I can 1,000 percent assure you that if there was a part I wanted to play, I would not turn down four million dollars to do it."
In fact, Teller stressed that he had shown loyalty to Chazelle and the movie at a time when it seemed to have been falling apart: "I couldn't jump ship just because the project was in flux. I'll go to my grave knowing that I expressed extreme loyalty to Damien and that movie."
Miles Teller Had A Year Of Mixed Fortunes
2017 was a year of mixed fortunes for Teller. He was in two films, both of which received widespread praise -- including for his own solid performances. However, Only the Brave and Thank You for Your Service both flopped at the box office, returning combined losses of nearly $25 million.
That would be the last time that Teller was seen on the big screen until 2022. It was during this 'spell in the wilderness' that he found himself on the wrong side of the law in San Diego in the summer of 2017. Thankfully for him, the SD Police Department had insufficient evidence and did not file any charges. Apart from the bad press, the episode did not cause any significant dent on his net worth.
His absence from active work, however, does appear to have cost him some money. Between 2017 and 2021, Teller's net worth has dropped by about $1 million to a total of $14 million. And while that is not an insignificant amount, he has at least managed to keep a majority of his wealth in what has mostly been a fallow period of work.