Once a household name and 90s fitness powerhouse, Susan Powter, 67, has opened up about the shocking way her life off the spotlight was uncovered — and it’s stranger than anyone could have imagined.
Powter, famous as a nutritionist, personal trainer, and motivational speaker, once earned $50 million a year. But after her finances were badly mismanaged, nearly everything vanished.
She declared bankruptcy and now lives in Las Vegas, working as an Uber Eats delivery driver.
Her new reality — including using a cardboard box as a nightstand in her tiny apartment — is detailed in the upcoming documentary Stop the Insanity: Finding Susan Powter, produced by Jamie Lee Curtis.
But the story behind how she was found after escaping the limelight is almost as wild as her current life — and Powter is now telling it herself.
In exclusive video obtained by the Daily Mail at a speaking engagement on Friday, Powter detailed the wild lengths documentary filmmaker Zeberiah Newman went to in order to track her down.
Susan Powter, 67, has opened up about the shocking way her life off the spotlight was uncovered — and it’s stranger than anyone could have imagined
In exclusive video obtained by the Daily Mail at a speaking engagement on Friday, Powter detailed the wild lengths documentary filmmaker Zeberiah Newman went to in order to track her down
He even ordered fast food just so she’d deliver it — a setup to confirm he’d finally found her.
‘I delivered a Burger King order and I got a text that said “Susan Powter,” and I froze inside,’ she told the packed room, gripping the microphone.
‘I’ve been driving for nine years because I thought somebody had finally put together the name, and I was like, “Oh my God.” I just froze. I was embarrassed.’
She continued, ‘And he said, my name is Zeberiah Newman.. I’ve been looking for you for a year. And I’m interested in talking to you about a documentary.’
Powter laughed at the boldness of his approach.
‘He had the audacity to say, can I come back tomorrow and film you? And I, I don’t know why the hell I said yes. I don’t know why. Because it was time. It was time. It was time.’
In an interview this week with Today, Powter said she took ‘full’ accountability for losing her money, admitting she failed to look into her finances.
‘I take full responsibility,’ she said. ‘I never checked. I never said, “Where’s the money?” So it’s not that there was no money. … There was a little bit of money, but not the amount of money that was generated. And I just walked away. I literally walked away. I did it very intentionally.’
Newman even ordered fast food just so she’d deliver it — a setup to confirm he’d finally found her
‘He had the audacity to say, can I come back tomorrow and film you? And I, I don’t know why the hell I said yes. I don’t know why. Because it was time. It was time. It was time;’ (pictured 1994)
Despite being a well-known face, Powter found that served as a disadvantage when looking for work.
‘I was fired from a job I needed desperately because she thought I was in there doing a food review.. I took my son to school on a bus because I didn’t have a car and the bus driver laughed at me.
‘Like, really, she was like, “what are you doing here? You’re Susan Powter.”‘ So sometimes it’s hard when you’ve been known. People think, oh, she’s loaded!’
After selling her iconic fitness program ‘Stop the Insanity! for $79.80 in the 90s, and making millions of dollars annually, Powter declared bankruptcy in 1995.
Though she still had some funds left, Powter previously said she was not in control, as financial advisors, business partners and her managers took over.
Last year she told People she calls a low-income senior community in Las Vegas home and receives two free meals a week.
‘I’ve known desperation. Desperation is walking back from the welfare office. It’s the shock of, “From there, now I’m here? How in God’s name?”,’ she told the outlet.
She admitted that she ‘never checked balances’ on her account, and regrets not taking control of her hard earned money.
Powter, 67, shot to fame as a nutritionist, personal trainer and motivational speaker three decades ago, earning $50 million a year
Powter with Will Smith on Episode 11 of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air
‘I should have questioned. I fully acknowledge that. I made a mistake.
‘I knew how much control I gave up. I didn’t know what got paid where, but I had no property. There was no funds left for my children,’ Powter said.
Just before losing almost all of her fortune, Powter was involved in a syndicated TV show that she called ‘complete crap.’
‘They put me in pearls. They produced “me” out of me. Those segments — I can’t even watch them now,’ she said.
She then made the decision to leave the fitness industry, leading her on a new career path while also focusing on being a mother.
‘I was teaching classes in an elementary school basement, photographing underwater home births, driving my little Volkswagen Bug with my baby, just being a mother.
‘I’m a very basic hippie kind of gal,’ Powter said.
By 2018, Powter confessed that her life became ‘scary as sh**’ as she became an UberEats and GrubHub driver to make at least $80 a day so she could eat and pay rent.
‘It’s so hard. It’s horrifyingly shocking. If sadness could kill you, I’d be dead,’ she told People.
Last year she told People she calls a low-income senior community in Las Vegas home and receives two free meals a week; pictured 1994
In 2023 she experienced a health scare and had to turn to collecting a Social Security check.
‘That $1500 check shocked the he** out of me,’ she shared.
‘Whoever said money can’t buy happiness lied. Liar. It wasn’t happiness. It was bigger than happiness. I took the deepest breath. And this is not just a “you used to have millions and now you don’t” story. This is a very real thing that many, many women go through.’
Now she saves her money ‘obsessively’ and spends frugally.
‘I don’t spend any money. I don’t go anywhere. I don’t eat out. These are the sweatpants I wear all the time. Seven dollars on Amazon,’ she told the outlet.
Although she’s struggled financially for so long, Powter initially decided to keep it a secret from her family, until she wrote a book about her journey this year.
After reading her novel ‘And Then Em Died… Stop the Insanity! A Memoir,’ her sons told their mother they had no idea what she was going through.
Powter has since become empowered to tell her story on the big screen after being contacted by filmmaker Zeberiah Newman, who asked if he could create a documentary about her journey.
After years of feeling like society had forgotten about her, Powter said: ‘Never did I think that was possible,’ in regard to Newman’s request.
She told the outlet: ‘I’ve learned that women are invisible and invaluable after a certain age. It’s usually the f***able age.’
Her life story is coming onto the big screen thanks to Jamie Lee Curtis; Powter pictured 2007
Soon after reaching out to Powter about the documentary offer, Newman decided to contact one of the biggest movie stars and his good friend, Jamie Lee Curtis.
‘She [Curtis] called me two minutes later, and the next day she said, “Go back to Vegas and start filming immediately”,’ Newman recalled.
The Freaky Friday star has since become the executive producer for the upcoming documentary, ‘Stop the Insanity: Finding Susan Powter.’
‘As one of the world’s first true influencers at the beginning of what we would now refer to as the social media era, Susan Powter was brazen and brave, and woke us all up,’ Curtis told the outlet.
‘Like so many women’s stories, Susan’s power and her light was diminished, denigrated and dismissed.’
Powter met the actress just a few months prior to her People interview, as they posed for a picture together.
‘I was in tears. And I said “Thank you. Thank you for believing in me. I had lost faith. I had lost complete and absolute hope”,’ Powter said.
Stop the Insanity: Finding Susan Powter will be available on Video On Demand starting 12/9.
