Ashleigh Banfield Net Worth

What Is Ashleigh Banfield's Net Worth and Salary?

Ashleigh Banfield is a Canadian-American journalist, television host, and podcaster who has a net worth of $5 million. Ashleigh Banfield formerly hosted the NewsNation program "Banfield" and the CNN shows "Early Start" and "Legal View with Ashleigh Banfield." She has also hosted the CourtTV true crime series "Judgment with Ashleigh Banfield" and the podcast "Drop Dead Serious With Ashleigh Banfield." Banfield has played herself in the film "Rise of the Damned" (2011) and the television series "House of Cards" (2014) and "In Treatment" (2021), and she appeared as a news anchor in a 2010 episode of "Breaking Bad." She played Dalia Hensfield in the 2021 film "Don't Look Up," which earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Picture. In 1994, Ashleigh won Iris Awards for Best of Festival and Best News Documentary.

Early Life

Ashleigh Banfield was born Ashleigh Dennistoun Banfield on December 29, 1967, in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. She attended the private preparatory school Balmoral Hall School until 1985, then she enrolled at Queen's University, where she earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in French and political science in 1988. Ashleigh continued studying French at the University of British Columbia, from which she graduated in 1992. TV writer / director Michelle MacLaren is Banfield's cousin.

Career

In 1988, Banfield worked for CJBN-TV in Kenora, Ontario, before moving to Winnipeg's CKY-TV later that year. From 1989 to 1992, she was a weekend news anchor at Edmonton's CFRN-TV. Ashleigh then moved to Calgary's CICT-TV, where she was a producer from 1992 to 1993 and a business correspondent and evening news anchor from 1993 to 1995. She won two Iris Awards during her time at CICT-TV, and while working there, she served as a freelance associate producer for "World News Tonight" on ABC in the U.S. and covered both the 1991 Bush/Gorbachev Summit and the 1993 Clinton/Yeltsin Summit. In the mid-1990s, Banfield took a job with KDFW in Texas, where she hosted "News 4 Texas Daybreak" before co-hosting "News 4 Texas" with Steve Eager at 5:00 and 9:00. After winning an Emmy for her work at KDFW, Ashleigh was hired by MSNBC. She hosted the show "MSNBC Investigates" and co-hosted "Homepage" with Mika Brzezinski and Gina Gaston, and she worked for MSNBC's parent company, NBC. On September 11, 2001, Banfield was reporting in Manhattan after the World Trade Tower had been hit, and while she was standing a few blocks away from the site, 7 World Trade Center collapsed. She told New Canaan – Darien Magazine, "I looked up and saw the building coming down and was amazed by what I was witnessing, but I wasn't aware that it was coming down on me, onto where I was standing. I began to run and I probably got only about five steps. I could feel my ears bending forward when the debris hit me from behind, and it was gritty, like the dust of glass."

Ashleigh subsequently earned a promotion, and MSNBC gave her a new show to produce titled "A Region in Conflict." She traveled to Afghanistan, where she visited a Kabul hospital and interviewed prisoners of the Taliban, and she interviewed Roman Catholic priest Father Gregory Rice in Pakistan. After "A Region in Conflict" ended, she began hosting "Ashleigh Banfield on Location." In 2003, she gave a lecture at Kansas State University in which she spoke out against the way the media was covering the conflict in Iraq, mentioning "cable news operators who wrap themselves in the American flag and go after a certain target demographic." The speech angered management at NBC, who decided to lower her profile. She spoke to New Canaan-Darien Magazine about that time, stating, "I was office-less for ten months. No phone, no computer. For ten months I had to report to work every day and ask where I could sit. If somebody was away I could use their desk. Eventually, after ten months of this, I was given an office that was a tape closet. They cleared the tapes out and put a desk and a TV in there, and a computer and phone. It was pretty blatant. The message was crystal clear. Yet they wouldn't let me leave. I begged for seventeen months to be let out of my contract. If they had no use for me, let's just part ways amicably — no need for payouts, just a clean break."

In 2005, Banfield was hired by CourtTV (now known as truTV), where she co-hosted "Banfield & Ford: Courtside," a trial coverage show, with Jack Ford. In 2009, she replaced Lisa Bloom as the host of "Open Court" on truTV. In early 2012, Ashleigh joined CNN as a co-anchor of the morning show "Early Start." She later anchored "CNN Newsroom" and hosted "Legal View with Ashleigh Banfield." In October 2014, she joined HLN, CNN's sister station, and began hosting "Primetime Justice with Ashleigh Banfield," which was later renamed "Crime & Justice with Ashleigh Banfield." In the fall of 2018, Ashleigh was laid off when HLN scaled back its live news programming. She then hosted "Live Rescue" on A&E. CourtTV was relaunched in 2019, and Banfield returned to the network to host various programs, including "Judgment with Ashleigh Banfield." In early 2021, she started hosting the NewsNation show "Banfield," which aired until January 2026.

Personal Life

On July 24, 2004, Ashleigh married Howard Gould, a real estate financier known for founding Equator Environmental, a carbon credit trading company. The couple married on a wooden yacht at Canada's Royal Lake of the Woods Yacht Club. They welcomed two sons, Ridley and Jay, before divorcing in 2012. On her 50th birthday in 2017, Banfield wed sales executive Chris Haynor at Vermont's Hermitage Club ski lodge after three years of dating. In 2008, Ashleigh became a naturalized U.S. citizen. Banfield previously wore rectangular eyeglasses, which had been "the object of countless remarks, pro and con, since her arrival on the national media scene in 2000," according to a 2009 article in New Canaan – Darien Magazine. In 2016, she underwent refractive lens exchange surgery to correct her far-sightedness.

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