Fame & Fortune: Eric Bogosian For Eric Bogosian, the goal is art, not money
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Bankrate: What have you done for TV?

Eric Bogosian: I created a show with Steven Spielberg called "High Incident." It ran on ABC for two years in the late '90s. It was a cop show. Otherwise, I've written shows that have not been on the air. But I was a producer and creator of that show.

Bankrate: And you worked directly with Spielberg? That would seem an unlikely pairing. How did you find it?

Eric Bogosian: It was fine. He got in touch with me because he wanted to create a show about police in the suburbs, and I guess he felt I was going to bring something special to it. I created the pilot with him and a few other writers. ABC picked it up and put it on the air. Generally, when you create a pilot, it's a template for the series, the characters you create become the characters you use week to week. I only worked on the pilot, I didn't continue to work on it, but I was listed as creator and producer on the show every week when the show was on the air. So it was incredibly lucrative. The things you don't think are going to work out, work out. For me, because I work in a variety of different things and I work in the theater, which is not particularly lucrative, one thing subsidizes something else.

Bankrate: You wouldn't strike me as one to support the corporate structure. Are you an investor?

Eric Bogosian: If you look at when my income rose to anything appreciable, around 1986, it was virtually at the same time that the market began this enormous rise, and it was just natural to put some money into stocks. My stock holdings grew because the market was growing in leaps and bounds. For instance, I bought some Microsoft at the time, and it became much more valuable. In terms of the way I deal with things financially, I'm frugal. I try to live within my means with as little debt as possible. My first priority was to make sure I had someplace to live in Manhattan, so real estate became part of it, and I just spread out. I invest my money in different areas, some very boring, some stocks, different things. It's fortunate for me that I did that because had I been more involved in stocks, I would have really been hurting considering what just happened.

Bankrate: So real estate really came through for you.

Eric Bogosian: Well, I don't make anything from the real estate. I suppose if I needed to cash in I could borrow against it, or sell my apartment or something. It isn't like I have vast amounts of money, either. I'm not making movies all the time. I'm not working out there. But I've done really well. I'm independent. I can stop working if I want to for a couple of years, and it would be fine. But I don't want to stop working. I'm always working, and I'm always working on the kinds of things I work on, and I never know when these things are going to lead to something that will make money.