It is fairly common for celebrities to adopt children, sometimes from very faraway places. For example, when Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie were still Brangelina, they adopted a full brood.
Other celebrities, such as Sandra Bullock, Sheryl Crow, Tom Cruise, and Jamie Lee Curtis have adopted children. He worked the other way too; There are a number of celebrities who were adopted before they became stars. Here are some of the highlights.
Keegan Michael Key
Key is a famous comedian who has appeared in countless movies, shows and commercials, but he really rose to fame thanks to his show Comedy Central with Jordan Peele, key and bell.
He was adopted when he was born by social workers Michael Key and Patricia Walsh. Although his parents separated when he was young, he remained close to both of them. He recently said he has “a lot of dads”. His birth parents and his adoptive parents were both biracial.
When he was in his mid-twenties, he searched for and found his mother. He said that meeting his mother “began to shed light and destroy myths.”
“The first year I knew her, my (birth) mom visited me in Detroit and kind of gave me a tour of my life – where she was born, where she was born, and finding out she was pregnant. It was amazing…and so emotional. It’s a very long and personal story, but, You know, it was a really great and inspiring story.”
Jack Nicholson
He’s one of the greatest actors of all time, so it makes sense that he’d have a very dramatic origin story. Nicholson actually grew up believing that his mother was his sister and that his grandmother Ethel May was his mother.
His mother John was conceived in his teens by a man named Don, who already had a wife at the time. She was 18 when he was born, and she was hoping to become famous, so she kept everything quiet.
He eventually followed his “sister” to Hollywood where he was discovered by a producer. He didn’t find out the truth until about 1974, when he was in his late thirties and a reporter revealed some personal information.
Babe Ruth
That’s right, one of the most beloved sports personalities of all time was adopted. Ruth died in 1948, and records about his childhood aren’t necessarily airtight, but we do know that he was the youngest child at eight.
His parents placed him at St. Mary’s Industrial School for Boys and eventually signed on to foster care for Ruth, who was classified as an unrepairable child. He was not allowed visits, but would occasionally find ways to go and visit his parents.
It was the parishioners of Saint Mary who noticed the boy’s apparent talent in baseball, and eventually Jack Dunn, a baseball scout, became his legal guardian to circumvent the custody order so that Ruth could play baseball.
ice tea
Legendary character Ice T, real name Tracy Morrow, may be best known for her role in commercials Law and order: Special Victims Unit of spit bars, but that doesn’t change the fact that his beginnings were humble.
When Morrow was young, his parents were killed in a tragic car accident. He was sent to live with his relatives, but they were not in a position to provide proper care for the little one.
That is, Morrow found himself in a nursing home in a tough neighborhood in south-central Los Angeles. He found himself in gangs and involved in violence, but luckily nothing tragic happened and he is now incredibly wealthy from his artistic pursuits.
Debbie Harry
Debbie Harry was best known as the singer of the ’80s punk-pop band Blondie, but she also had a difficult childhood. She was abandoned by her mother when she was only a few months old. She found out she was adopted when she was four years old.
She said she used to imagine Marilyn Monroe as her real mother but that this was more of a “philosophical thing”.
You may have used the wrong language in the past. I saw it as the mother of invention or something. “She had a profound effect on a lot of people,” the singer said.
She said her difficult past pushed her forward, and she used to go to New Jersey and Greenwich Village as a teenager to explore the “dark side of life.”
Jamie Foxx
Academy Award winning actor Jamie Foxx had an interesting childhood. He was adopted when he was seven months old by the same people who took care of his mother when she was little.
Estelle and Mark Talley took in Foxx and raised him as if he were their own, but he didn’t know the truth of the situation until he was five years old. Until then, he just assumed he had four fathers and that was the case.
Estelle Tully called by the pseudonym Grandma. She supported the young man’s dreams and aspirations even when he was in elementary school. Case in point: Foxx would have trouble acting in class, but Grandma made a deal with his teachers where he could crack 10-minute jokes on Friday if he acted the rest of the week. It worked like a dream, the rest is history.
Steve Jobs
Steve Jobs is one of the most famous people ever, and we will probably remember him the same way we remember people like Henry Ford and Benjamin Franklin.
Jobs’ biological parents gave him up for adoption when he was an infant, and then Clara and Paul Jobs adopted him. His father was a mechanic and a Coast Guard veteran, and his mother was an accountant.
His parents are Abdel-Fattah “John” Jandali and Joan Schieble, both graduates of the University of Wisconsin.
Nicole Richie
Nicole Richie is the adopted daughter of singer-songwriter Lionel Richie. Her biological father is the brother of musician Sheila E, Peter Michael Escovedo. Lionel Richie said she could move in with him because her parents couldn’t support her.
Lionel Richie talked about how this happened during an interview with Piers Morgan:
‘While you’re having difficulty,’ I said, ‘the kid’s sitting here in limbo, so I’ll tell you what I’m going to do, just put the kid in my house until the tour is over, then we’ll sort it out later.’ And so it took about a year for me to fall in love and it was a little button, and of course at the time I was my dad and so I said, ‘Okay, that’s what we’re going to do, you’re going to make everyone wish they had adopted them. You’ll make everyone in your family wish they’d actually have a chance to bring you back,” and that’s when I said, ‘Let’s adopt it.
Bill Clinton
The 42nd president of the United States wasn’t actually the first president to be adopted. That distinction goes to the 38th man to hold this position, Gerald Ford. In addition, there are rumors that Abraham Lincoln was also adopted, but unfortunately there is no conclusive evidence.
Clinton was born in Hope, Arkansas in 1946, and a few months before his mother Virginia Cassidy Blythe was born, his biological father died in a car accident. His mother remarried in 1950 to Roger Clinton, and it is this who adopted him.
hill of faith
Faith Hill is one of the most successful music artists of all time, regardless of genre. She has sold more than 40 million records worldwide and has five Grammy Awards. She also had a difficult childhood.
She was born in Mississippi and was adopted as a child. Her adoptive parents told her that her mother had an affair with a married man and that she abandoned Hill. This proved to be incorrect in the end, but Hill said she had always felt she was a “gypsy at heart”.
When she found out her mother was a painter, she said it “helped her understand why she felt inadequate”. She also discovered that while her mother gave up Hill for adoption, she would later marry Hill’s biological father and have another child.
Marlin Monroe
Model blonde bombshell and actress Marilyn Monroe was one of the most famous women on the planet in the 1950s and early 1960s. Her uncommon beauty means that she remains a household name even now 60 years after her death in 1962 at the age of 36.
Monroe’s mother has a history of mental illness and has not known her father’s identity. She had a turbulent childhood roving around nurseries and orphanages. Many families wanted to adopt her, but her mother did not sign the necessary papers.
I finally moved in with a family friend, and later with a relative. She eventually married at 16 to a 21-year-old neighbor. She met photographer David Conover while working at a munitions factory during World War II, and eventually quit to pursue modeling work, and the rest is history.
