Multimillionaire Taylor Sheridan experienced homelessness twice before rising to fame as the brains behind one of Hollywood’s most popular shows.
Before becoming a television titan, Sheridan, 56, found himself living in his car as he struggled to break into the industry.
‘I was homeless twice,’ he told Town & Country.
Undeterred by his predicament, Sheridan would typically retreat to wide open areas away from Los Angeles where he could ‘safely sleep’ as he continued pursuing fame.
‘I lived in my car. Sometimes I’d go to Ojai, just somewhere where I could safely sleep. I did that for six months,’ he said.
‘I could have decided at any point, “I’m going to go get a full-time job and I’m going to give up this dream,”‘ he said. ‘And I chose to sleep in my car over that.’
Multi-millionaire Taylor Sheridan experienced homelessness twice before rising to fame as the brains behind one of Hollywood’s most popular shows. Pictured in June
Sheridan pictured in 2005, years before becoming a Hollywood power player
Sheridan didn’t specify when exactly the troubles occurred, but early in his Hollywood career he landed roles in Walker, Texas Ranger, Her Costly Affair, Dr Quinn, Medicine Woman, Party of Five, and more.
Now a landowner and with a rumored net worth of $200 million, those days of living out of a car are a thing of the past for Sheridan.
‘When I sold that first screenplay, I bought a little house on an acre on a river in Wyoming,’ he told the publication. ‘We moved there, and I wrote a check for it. Then, as I would start to have more success, I would buy a little bit more land beside it and get a couple horses. I’m still so averse to having to ever owe anybody anything.’
Sheridan’s property portfolio includes the historic Four Sixes (6666) ranch in Texas, where some of Yellowstone was shot before he acquired the land.
It is also a place that has become interwoven into the universe of the show.
Founded in 1870 by cattleman Samuel Burk Burnett, the ranch was in the hands of his great-granddaughter Anne Windfohr Marion by the time Sheridan’s association with the property began.
In 2020, ‘Miss Marion’ died of lung cancer aged 81 and in 2022, Sheridan’s investment group bought the ranch for a rumored $320 million.
Sheridan was approached by the trustees and asked if he would be interested in owning the ranch as well as preserving the land and traditions.
‘They said, ‘Do you want to pony up about 350 million bucks and take this place over?’ and I said, ‘Well, I’m $330 million short,”‘ he told Town & Country. ‘So I went and made an overall deal with Paramount to raise the money, brought in some investors, and then I bought it.’
The ranch has now found its way onto television screens after being written into the Yellowstone storyline.
Today Sheridan is a landowner with a rumored net worth of $200 million thanks to his hit series Yellowstone and its spin-offs
In 2022, Sheridan’s investment group acquired the historic Four Sixes ranch in Texas where some scenes for Yellowstone were shot
It was even rumred to be the setting of a possible spin-off when a character relocated there.
Sheridan has since confirmed that was never the case, telling Rodeo Time podcast: ‘I would never fictionalize that ranch.’
Although ‘people thought that that was gonna be,’ the showrunner insisted: ‘That’s never gonna happen.’
The original Yellowstone series included occasional scenes of Jimmy Hurdstrom’s life on the 6666 Ranch, with actual workers there featuring in the supporting parts.
‘I’ve actually got on my computer all the scenes of Jimmy at the 6666 pulled out and strung together, and it makes its own perfect little movie where you watch him go there as this misfit and leave a man and a respected cowboy,’ said Sheridan.
Sheridan is the creator behind the wildly-popular Yellowstone series, which starred Kevin Costner and Luke Grimes
He observed that viewers ‘who are in the cowboy world’ were able to recognize Heath Ownbey, the real-life cattle manager of the Waggoner Ranch, ‘and so for the people who know, that rings really true to them.’
However, the prospect of manufacturing new storylines on a full-out spin-off would involve ‘making up lives. Now I have to invent a drama. We can’t just watch a kid learn how to rope every single episode,’ Sheridan noted.
‘So now I’m trivializing and fictionalizing something where real people work and they raise their families there, and I could never do that to them.’
He said he was ‘very protective’ of the ranch and ‘very, very careful’ of the ‘big responsibility’ of being the ‘person who has to protect that brand.’
