Hollywood Producer Steve Bing Has Died By Apparent Suicide
In tragic news, movie producer Steve Bing has died by apparent suicide. Elizabeth Hurley and their copy/paste son Damien Hurley both responded to the news on Instagram expressing profound sadness. Steve was 55. LA Mag reports that he jumped from his apartment building in Century City. Steve is also survived by his daughter Kira Kerkorian who he had with the tennis player Lisa Bonder.
Last year, both of Steve’s children were involved in a legal dispute over a trust set up by Steve’s father Dr. Peter Bing, who didn’t think Steve’s kids should inherit any of the fortune he himself had inherited from his father, New York real estate developer Leo Bing, because they had been born out of wedlock. According to LA Mag:
Film producer and screenwriter Steve Bing has died following what authorities are describing as a jump off of the Century City apartment building known as Ten Thousand. The 55-year-old was known in Hollywood for his connection to films including Kangaroo Jack, Get Carter, and The Polar Express.
Bing has two children, son Damian Hurley with former partner Elizabeth Hurley, and daughter Kira Bonder, with former partner Lisa Bonder. In 2019, a Los Angeles judge ruled that both of Bing’s children are entitled to a sizable slice of their grandfather Dr. Peter Bing’s trust. A trustee had attempted to exclude them based on the fact that Bing wasn’t married to either child’s mother when the children were born. Bing accused his father and sister of “orchestrating a massive money-grab” designed to shunt more money to her children.
Here’s what Elizabeth and Damien posted about Steve’s death.
It’s a tragic end to a complicated family saga involving millions of dollars in inherited wealth.
At the age of 18, while a student at Stanford, Bing inherited an estimated $600 million from his grandfather Leo S. Bing, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The senior Bing was a powerful real estate developer, responsible for dozens of New York City apartments and other buildings, and gave his name to the theater at LACMA.
Upon inheriting, Steve dropped out of Stanford to pursue a career in Hollywood. According to ABC News:
In the 1980s, Steve Bing dropped out of his father’s alma mater, Stanford University, where the elder Bing had donated $50 million, for a career in Hollywood.
Bing was an LA socialite who frequently dated famous women and was often seen on red carpets, at big-dollar benefits and courtside at Lakers games.
In his 30s, he was involved in a pair of high-profile lawsuits centering on his possible paternity of children that brought him media attention on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. A 2002 DNA test required by a British court showed that he was the father of the infant son of model and actress Elizabeth Hurley, whom he had dated.
The same year he sued movie mogul Kirk Krekorian, alleging Krekorian had hired a private detective to go through Bing’s trash to obtain DNA for another paternity test, this one to determine whether Bing was the father of the daughter born to Krekorian’s then-wife, tennis player Lisa Bonder. That lawsuit was settled out of court.
LA Mag adds that Steve was a big donor in Democratic circles.
Bing was well known for contributing large sums to political causes. He donated $1 million to the DNC to help fund the 2000 convention in L.A., spent an estimated $50 million to campaign for an oil production tax in 2006, and gave at least $10 million to Bill Clinton’s foundation. Bing reportedly also paid for the plane used by Clinton to rescue journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee from North Korea in 2009. Both Clinton and Bing were in the past reported to be part of a billionaire clique that included Burkle and Jeffrey Epstein.
TMZ reports that “sources connected to him tell us he’d been depressed about lack of human contact during quarantine,” which while completely speculative, adds to the sense of poignancy in his passing.
Pic: Wenn.com