Sharon Stone complains about how 'very expensive' it is to be famous despite a net worth of $40M — calls herself a 'blue collar' worker who gets stuck with $3K dinner checks. Is she right?

“It’s very expensive to be famous,” Stone tells InStyle. “You go out to dinner, and there’s 15 people at the table, and who gets the check? You get the $3,000 dinner check every single time.”

Still, you’d think with her $40 million net worth (according to Celebrity Net Worth), she could easily absorb a couple $3,000 dinner checks without breaking the bank. But at the height of her fame, Stone says she couldn’t go anywhere without being mobbed — she had to buy a home in a gated community and then hire a staff, makeup artists, publicists, managers and so on. That adds up.

However, later in the interview, despite her success, Stone made it clear she still identifies with her blue-collar roots. Discussing her role in pop superstar Rita Ora’s music video, she made a surprising assertion.

“We’re a very blue collar group,” Stone says of herself, Ora and Ora’s husband filmmaker and actor Taika Waititi. “We work.”

She may come from humble origins, but can a global superstar really call themselves blue collar?

What is blue collar work?

Blue-collar work refers to jobs that involve manual labor or a skilled trade. White-collar jobs, on the other hand, encompass anyone who might work in an office and be expected to wear a white shirt.

Archetypal blue-collar jobs include construction, welding, mechanics or maintenance. Workers are generally compensated with an hourly wage or by piecemeal, while white-collar employees typically work on salary.

The term blue collar is often used interchangeably with working class, which typically refers to people from a lower socioeconomic station — of which Stone certainly is not. And this may in fact be an outdated notion, considering the demand — and high compensation — for skilled blue-collar workers in the labor market these days.

But does Stone qualify as blue collar?

As for whether acting is considered blue-collar or white-collar labor, that’s a bit less clear.