Sofía Vergara

Gloria Delgado-Pritchett made Sofía Vergara the highest-paid woman on American television, but she spent the decade before that getting ready. A photographer found her on a Colombian beach at 17, which was enough to pull her away from a dentistry degree she was two semesters from finishing. She co-hosted Univision shows through the late 1990s, then relocated to the U.S. after her brother was killed in a kidnapping attempt in Colombia. Modern Family arrived in 2009. By 2012, Forbes put her earnings at $19 million for the year.

After 11 seasons of Modern Family, she moved to America's Got Talent as a judge, reportedly earning $10 million a season. The bigger shift came with Griselda, the 2024 Netflix miniseries where she played drug queenpin Griselda Blanco under three hours of daily prosthetics. The role earned her a 2024 Emmy nomination, the first for a Latina born in Latin America in the Lead Actress in a Limited Series category. She lost to Jodie Foster and publicly joked she'd been 'robbed' for the fifth time. Her business portfolio includes a Walmart clothing line, a beauty brand called Toty, and endorsement deals stacked a decade deep.

She co-founded Latin World Entertainment in 1994, a talent management company for Latin performers, while she was still a Colombian model barely known outside Latin America. By the time American audiences knew her as Gloria, LWE had grown into one of the largest Latin talent firms in the country. Also worth knowing: she's naturally blonde. The dark hair is a styling choice that hardened into every casting director's assumption.