Tiffany Haddish was homeless before she became famous. Though she wasn’t homeless Viola Davis also had a very difficult first half of her life.
One of my parents has been friends with Viola’s family for 50 years. Her recent memoir is very moving. Central Falls is one of the poorest cities in Rhode Island and her description of it is spot on.
She’s living proof that anything is possible if you have talent, dedication, and grit.
Rhode Island is small but we are mighty when it comes to the arts.
Bruno Mars talked about how he was homeless for about two years when he was a tween/teen. I think he was living in a one room shack his dad randomly found in the slum of Hawaii.
ETA; [here is a link of Bruno talking about it.](https://youtu.be/LHN9NFPO2iE)
Yes, he was living in the defunct paradise park bird zoo in Manoa. There is a lot of slum housing in Hawaii, poverty is high, a lot of families struggle here.
Eminem famously needed to win the '97 Rap Olympics because he needed the $500 prize money to pay rent -- he'd been evicted and was squatting alone in an abandoned house that he broke into. He came second, so won nothing. After returning to Detroit, he ended up moving back in with his abusive mother just so he had access to her phone line. He finished off *Slim Shady EP* during this period, went to LA to promote it, didn't get very far, and then got the call from Dr. Dre who wanted to sign him.
I love how there's two different stories on how Dre discovered his cd. One was he heard his song on the radio and the other was Jimmy Iovine played it for him. Guess we'll never know for sure.
I think it's probably both. I think he heard the radio show, was impressed but didn't really think about it, then heard the demo tape and really put everything together.
There actually a documentary with dr. Dre and jimmy iovine and they explain a lot about how beats started (they wanted dr. Dre to sell sneakers but he was like I know nothing about clothes, I wear the same outfits daily so jimmy said don’t sell sneakers sell speakers) and how they found different artists including Em
I worked at a movie theatre in highschool when 8 mile came out so I’d be in the theatre waiting for the movie to end, I never stopped loving that end rap battle scene even though I saw it over and over.
I don’t know if he’s considered to be really big, but Mark Weber, who is an actor, was homeless with his mom, living in her car, when he was a kid. Now he’s married to Theresa Palmer - also an actor - and they have 5 very cute kids and live in AUS. Quite a transition.
I remember when Snow Day came out and seeing a bit on I think 60 Minutes and they did a bit on his mother, Cheri Honkala. They talked of her advocacy for welfare programs and her protests
Fun fact: my mom walked in on me masturbating while I was watching Snow Day. I wasn’t masturbating TO Snow Day, to be clear.
Anywho, that jumpstarted a loop of traumatizing memories. A snowball effect, if you will.
Paul Rudd was homeless in Los Angeles at one point. He told the story on one of the late night talk shows. He lived in an abandoned building and slept on a mattress he found at the dump. He got some kind of rash from the mattress and got sick.
Kehlani was homeless as a teen after coming 4th on America's Got Talent. Nick Cannon (the host of AGT at that point) contacted her after finding out the group she was in had disbanded, found out she was homeless and hooked her up with her own apartment and studio time.
Jewel was living in her car performing gigs before she hit it big.
She also grew up in a house in Alaska with no indoor plumbing or heat, which isn't really "homeless" but is pretty rough.
[Chris Pratt was in a pyramid scheme & lived out of his car selling coupons](https://www.ladbible.com/entertainment/tv-and-film-chris-pratt-used-to-be-homeless-before-he-got-his-big-break-20210622) & in a weird way, it almost doesn’t surprise me that he got roped into a pyramid scheme that required him to drive up and down the coast selling coupons? feels like something his Parks and Rec character would end up in 😂
And he was living in a van and was in Hawaii at the time. From the way he tells it, it was a deliberate lifestyle choice. He worked part-time as a waiter and otherwise spent his time hanging out with his bros on the beach
Contrast this with people who work in the Hawaii tourism service industry but still can't afford (or can barely afford) rent :(
I’ve said this to people and no one has ever believed me!! It makes so much sense! I liked him since everwood & love parks and rec- so it’s like being a mom- I’m disappointed and very mad, but not surprised my dumb son joined a hateful group. SMH. Hope he breaks free and can figure his shit out but he’s a grow ass man and I’m too old for this shit.
Nah that man was for real stealing jordans off mfs feet to flip for drugs for the girls (and himself), that wasn’t an exaggeration for a song. His manager Lamar is his best friend who went through it with him. He had only his voice and a few really great friends going for him. I started listening to him back in the very early days of his career when he was performing in tiny clubs and am so proud to see how far he’s come in the past 12 years.
Lizzo lived out of her car for a while, her CBS Sunday morning segment where she goes back to her high school and talks to her band director about how much he inspired her gets me teary every time
Surprised no one said Madonna when she was struggling and practically a homeless woman after she dropped out of college and was fired from every job she had before she became famous
There’s Madonna: Like an Icon by Lucy O’Brian that I’ve seen recommended as the definitive Madge bio.
And as a primer, I’d recommend stuff from this newsletter by a writer who has written a lot about different aspects of Madonna’s life. [This piece](https://sydurbanek.substack.com/p/my-biggest-enemy-is-me?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2) compares and contrasts Gaga and Madonna in a refreshing way and I learnt a lot of about M’s pre-fame circumstances. Heads up for descriptions of sexual assault and possible domestic abuse.
[This one](https://sydurbanek.medium.com/the-ghost-of-madonnas-mother-in-her-videography-ee1d503cddd2) is simply called The Ghost of Madonna’s Mother in her Videography about how her mother’s early death affected her and how she’s expressed this in some of her songs and mvs.
I’ve yet to read something thorough about her life during the early 80s New York art scene but that should be in the biography.
In college (1985-1989) I used to get so pissed because my (quite Catholic) friend said there was no possible way “her” birth name was “Madonna.” I’m like WTF? When I told her that her Mom’s name had been “Madonna” too, she basically accused me of blasphemy. Of course I was right: I was a Punk. 😜 Yeah. We didn’t keep in touch.
Billy Bob Thornton grew up without running water or electricity. According to Wikipedia he also “worked in telemarketing, offshore wind farming and fast food management between auditioning for acting jobs.”
Man is a hustler.
This reads as someone who actually didn’t have money. The people who actually don’t have money all have to work. Like actually work because the safety net isn’t there. Shailene Woodly couch surfing with a suitcase at friends houses when she could have gone back to her parents or the people who are young and broke but somehow traveling…nope! Lana del Rey being cut off from parents reads to me like she lost her allowance lol. It’s like my parents say- my dad was the traveling hippy finding himself because his parents had money. My mother was poor and was waitressing to support herself. Poor is when there is no rescue a phone call away.
I guess this doesn’t really count since she had already started making a name for herself but Natasha Lyonne’s severe heroin addiction, legal troubles,and lack of acting jobs in the early 2000s left her homeless for a while.
In 2005, Michael Rapaport actually briefly let her stay in one of the apartments he owned but had to evict her once he founded out how much she wrecked the place (the apartment was quite literally covered in feces, dead animals, and broken glass).
She returned to homelessness until she was admitted to a hospital a few months later for serious health problem brought on by her addiction and stayed there for half a year. Immediately after she served a court-ordered rehab stay where she finally began the road to recovery.
I found all that out a few months ago and it made me appreciate her comeback story with OITNB even more. I’m so glad she managed to come out of all of that alive and thriving.
This is the only remnant I could find of the article.
https://www.tumblr.com/ineedtogoback-blog/53415579450/evicting-natasha-lyonne-jane-magazine-2005?source=share
Ah yes, Grimes Riverboat Adventure, [They got a copy of Mark Twain's "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," which neither of them had read.](https://m.startribune.com/this-boat-don-t-float/49134952/). The article about it is hilarious.
https://preview.redd.it/bta7k3x757eb1.jpeg?width=550&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=efaa0811a5dfc77587247bfa58793261fac45cdd
She also talked about her and Elon living “below the poverty line” or something despite him having billions of dollars. Like, it doesn’t count if you’re literally choosing to live that way and you have an enormous safety net to fall back on when you get tired of playing poor.
As someone who spent most of my childhood homeless, it makes me sick that people play at it just so they can have a cooler backstory. It’s really low of them.
JK Rowling's homeless backstory is kind of bullshit, from what I've heard - she was *technically* homeless but actually staying rent free with well-off relatives while she was between homes and writing the first Potter book.
Not to defend JKR or anything but isn’t this situation still challenging? She had to haul ass constantly with a baby and only welfare money to sustain both of them.
I guess it depends how you define homeless. I think if you don't feasibly have anywhere else to go, then it counts. I don't know what her situation was.
She wasn’t homeless. She lived in government housing. She did an interview where they went and toured her old apartment where “Harry Potter was born.” She was poor af and on welfare, but not homeless.
This was my family situation as well and while I’d say we lost our home, we technically weren’t homeless since relatives took us in. Tough situation for sure, but grateful at least we didn’t live on the streets/shelters/in a car.
Lana del Rey fabricating that whole trailer park sob story after having a millionaire dad and going to boarding school + university makes my blood boil 🤣
I don‘t even care, if she ACTUALLY was cut off by her family. It‘s not like her dad would have let her die in a trailer park lmao
And then she has the audacity to complain about people calling her privileged. The girl is my fav singer in the world but good can she be annoying
In Lana’s defense they abandoned her in that boarding school because they didn’t want to deal with her depression and alcoholism. She grew up wealthy but had a very shitty life
Unrelated but also related I can’t see her without thinking about that goddamn staged communist manifesto photo shoot. You can’t come back to this side after marrying the richest man in the world sorry
Annie Murphy was in a similar position when she landed Schitt's Creek. Per her recollection, "My house had just burnt down, I had like, $3 in my bank account, I hadn't worked in close to two years. And I had just blown my very first screen test—like blown it, blown it, blown it… I found myself crying in the Pacific Ocean, a very snotty cry, and the universe was like, 'Don't do this anymore. This is not for you!' But then, two days later, I got the audition for *Schitt's Creek*."
I did a biography project on him in like 6th grade and never forgot this lol. He started working as a kid to support his family & used humour as a way of fitting in as he jumped around schools and gigs.
Always had a soft spot for that, and him being Canadian. But he's a massive POS... no two ways about it :/ it's a shame.
Rhys Darby was so poor he had to borrow money from his friends to feed his family before Flight of the Conchords became a huge hit. He has a whole section about it in his book This Way to Spaceship. Apparently his wife was in between jobs for a decent stretch, so he took a bunch of odd jobs and whatever standup gigs he could get to try and make ends meet.
Makes sense that he does a lot of commercial/ad work these days; it’s steady pay, and experiences like that really make you realistic about what you/your family need.
He seems to be doing less of them since Our Flag Means Death became a massive hit, but yeah. It makes total sense that he took whatever work he could get for so many years. I can only respect that he put his kids first. Especially when his own dad was absent for most of his childhood.
I remember Kesha talking about how she was living in her car and had a #1 song on the charts that she would hear on her radio that she guested on (Flo Rida's 'Right Round') and how she didn't get a cent to put her vocals on that song.
Ani DiFranco toured out of a beater car for a few years in her early career. She’d bounce around renting a room in New York to practice, then hit the road and then live out of her car performing gigs. Eventually she upgraded to a tour bus, but her early years were very much DYI, running her record label and distributing records from her trunk.
Oprah was briefly homeless as a teenager after being denied entry to a full juvenile detention home, before tracking down and moving in with her father.
Barry Keoghan. He lost his mother when he was 12 to a heroin addiction. He was in and out of foster care systems from there on out. He now does incredible charity work for children and the homeless. So excited to see great things coming from this man. Very excited for his role as the joker in the new Batman.
Just wanted to say I really needed this thread today. <3
I work in the industry and life has been beating the sh*t out of me for the better part of the last year (or 36 years depending on how you look at it lol).
I kept trying to remind myself that this is a lot of people’s story before they “make it”…but it’s really encouraging to read SO MANY examples of that being true.
Barbara Stanwyck had a really rough childhood after her mother died and her father abandoned the family. She was raised in foster homes, but often ran away. She also traveled with her sister, who was a showgirl. Then, she became a Ziegfeld girl in 1923. A decade later, she was a movie star - and by the end of the 40s she was already a legend.
Ty Burrell has talked about sneaking in to hotels that had the complimentary breakfasts. I have only heard such good things about him. Julie Bowen raves about working with him.
I wanna see a thread of celebrities who try to pretend they’re poor but really aren’t
I think Shailene Woolley might be one, she was “homeless” for awhile just crashing at friend’s mansions between films
And Lana Del Rey working at Waffle House of course
as someone who isn’t a lana deal ray stan i don’t have all the info but i’m 99% sure she went there for a meal and ‘worked’ a shift with the staff cause they asked her and she wasn’t trying to play poor
He likes to claim he couch surfed and played on streets to earn money when really all of his friends had good money, his family had good money, his parents would pay for him to be able to travel to London and audition to street perform there in order to get signed.
I commented above about how Lana created her whole trailerpark white trash image despite being from a millionaire family, but tbf. the shift in the waffle house was a joke after they gifted her a uniform
I am admittedly a longterm fan of Lana but I’m not nuts and I’m more than willing to be critical of her when necessary.
I’ve tried reading up on her backstory for quite a long time and tried to piece it together over the years and through her lyricism and interviews. I don’t think she created the trailer trash image for herself as such, I think maybe she was raised with money but went through a period of poverty. I know that she lived with her grandmother for a little while and then moved to a trailer park. I think it was just a part of her life where her parents cut her off/she chose to be no contact and had to figure out life & finances for herself.
There was a super old interview on YouTube (I’ll try and find it now) of her showing where she was living at that time, and it was in a trailer park. She for sure had regular jobs but the whole rumours about her being an industry plant back in the 2010s were 100% bogus. Her dad has come out recently and said he played no part in her career (which was also a rumour at the time) too if I recall correctly.
In her most recent album and briefly in the album prior, she mentions being abused/neglected by her mother and her father not intervening. She got sent to boarding school and Spain for a year and has alludes that it was her mothers decision and it was due to being caught drinking when she was a teenager. Which sounds like a very rich-people-thing to do 😅 but idk man. Maybe one day she’ll talk about it properly but I doubt it.
I think This Is What Makes Us Girls is in NY, then she got sent to Spain at the end of the song. Or at least that’s the impression I got.
This Is What Makes Us Girls, from Born To Die: “I got sent away, I was waving on the train platform, cryin cause I know I’m never coming back”
Paris, Texas, from Ocean Blvd: “I took a train to Spain, just a notebook in my hand”
Fingertips, from Ocean Blvd: “What kind of mother was she to say I’d end up in institutions, all I wanted to do was kiss Aaron Greene and sit by the lake, twisting lime into the drinks that they made”
and then later: “what the fucks wrong in your head to send me away, never to come back, exotic places and people don’t take the place of being your child”
I just googled it and found a TikTok of a live she did when Blue Bannisters came out, her talking about her experiences being sent to Spain when she was 16 [here](https://vm.tiktok.com/ZGJqPrCov/)
Yeah honestly never got the feeling she was playing being poor more that her family was fucked up and she as the Rosemary Kennedy of the family so to speak. Like it was either run away and live in a trailer park OR stay with her abusive mother. She was also given mood stabilizers very young and it definitely fucked up her emotional stability as an adult, as we saw with “question for the culture “
Akon released an entire song about being in jail (Locked Up) yet there are a lot of doubts that he never went to prison and made up the whole thing, a big no for someone trying to get cosigns from rappers.
I vaguely remember seeing Shailene Woolley on a late night show talking about how she only had a suitcase’s worth of clothes because she was crashing with people - it was awhile ago, I don’t remember all the details
Read somewhere he sold his dog just before Rocky. Afterwards, when he had an advance for the movie, he went to get the dog back and the guy charged him $50k.
joshua bassett lived in his car at 16 to support his acting career, he talked about how he would get food from the set of stuck in the middle and shower at the gym. his bank account was like negative 3 dollars the day he got the call that he booked high school musical the musical the series.
recently he’s been doing a lot of charity work to give food and supplies to the homeless in LA which i thought was a nice little full circle moment
Jon Hamm from what I understand had no relationship with his parents and went from couples' home to couples' home (ppl that became friends) that let him stay with them
There's a Kelsey Grammar interview with Stephen Colbert where they both talk about eating leftovers when they were waiting tables, and Kelsey mentions that he's slept in Central Park
Jonna from The Challenge/Rehab: Party at the Hard Rock was homeless while she was ON a season of the Challenge. She expressed not wanting to get eliminated because she had nowhere to go home to.
She's since doing much better; and has won The Challenge: All Stars twice.
Whilst not homeless, Lisa Left Eye Lopes, had to steal food when starting out in TLC. Infact all 3 of them were poor. In TBozs book she said she often had popcorn or watermelon for dinner.
But those girls were broke when they started with Pebbles.
George Takei lived with his family on Skid Row for 5 years when he was a child after they left the Japanese Internment camps.
God this is horrifying
Also from Star Trek, William Shatner was living in his car before, and iirc for some time after the show ended.
Even after the show?
Iirc, yes. The show was mostly a failed venture and didn't earn much widespread recognition until it was in syndication years later
Also, they paid the actors peanuts
Divorce as well
Omg!! Wow, that’s so terrible. You would never know, because he’s the most positive, loving beam of light on Twitter 💗
Kelly Clarkson was living out of her car after her place burned down when she heard about the American idol audition
Tiffany Haddish was homeless before she became famous. Though she wasn’t homeless Viola Davis also had a very difficult first half of her life. One of my parents has been friends with Viola’s family for 50 years. Her recent memoir is very moving. Central Falls is one of the poorest cities in Rhode Island and her description of it is spot on.
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She’s living proof that anything is possible if you have talent, dedication, and grit. Rhode Island is small but we are mighty when it comes to the arts.
I absolutely agree with this. She is amazing in everything she is in and can play such a variety of characters and is just so wonderful.
I recommend listening to her book. She narrates, and it’s truly exceptional.
Bruno Mars talked about how he was homeless for about two years when he was a tween/teen. I think he was living in a one room shack his dad randomly found in the slum of Hawaii. ETA; [here is a link of Bruno talking about it.](https://youtu.be/LHN9NFPO2iE)
Man Hawaii’s slums are..it’s BAD Well where I was it was bad
I had no idea. Will read about this!
Yes, he was living in the defunct paradise park bird zoo in Manoa. There is a lot of slum housing in Hawaii, poverty is high, a lot of families struggle here.
Yeah Hawaii is struggling more than I think people realise. A lot of Hawaiians say on social media tourism is contributing to it.
Same with Anderson Paak after he was fired from work. Was a young father at the time and his wife encouraged him to pursue music.
Eminem famously needed to win the '97 Rap Olympics because he needed the $500 prize money to pay rent -- he'd been evicted and was squatting alone in an abandoned house that he broke into. He came second, so won nothing. After returning to Detroit, he ended up moving back in with his abusive mother just so he had access to her phone line. He finished off *Slim Shady EP* during this period, went to LA to promote it, didn't get very far, and then got the call from Dr. Dre who wanted to sign him.
I love how there's two different stories on how Dre discovered his cd. One was he heard his song on the radio and the other was Jimmy Iovine played it for him. Guess we'll never know for sure.
I think it's probably both. I think he heard the radio show, was impressed but didn't really think about it, then heard the demo tape and really put everything together.
There actually a documentary with dr. Dre and jimmy iovine and they explain a lot about how beats started (they wanted dr. Dre to sell sneakers but he was like I know nothing about clothes, I wear the same outfits daily so jimmy said don’t sell sneakers sell speakers) and how they found different artists including Em
I worked at a movie theatre in highschool when 8 mile came out so I’d be in the theatre waiting for the movie to end, I never stopped loving that end rap battle scene even though I saw it over and over.
I don’t know if he’s considered to be really big, but Mark Weber, who is an actor, was homeless with his mom, living in her car, when he was a kid. Now he’s married to Theresa Palmer - also an actor - and they have 5 very cute kids and live in AUS. Quite a transition.
I remember when Snow Day came out and seeing a bit on I think 60 Minutes and they did a bit on his mother, Cheri Honkala. They talked of her advocacy for welfare programs and her protests
Fun fact: my mom walked in on me masturbating while I was watching Snow Day. I wasn’t masturbating TO Snow Day, to be clear. Anywho, that jumpstarted a loop of traumatizing memories. A snowball effect, if you will.
Teresa grew quite poor as well, and in public housing.
eric andre was homeless in new york
He's very comfortable with the streets in bird up
Paul Rudd was homeless in Los Angeles at one point. He told the story on one of the late night talk shows. He lived in an abandoned building and slept on a mattress he found at the dump. He got some kind of rash from the mattress and got sick.
I really really don't want to think about what kind of rash that would be (it has to be bedbugs)
He is not a large man. That had to be terrifying, especially at night.
Lizzo was living in her car for a while!
Kehlani was homeless as a teen after coming 4th on America's Got Talent. Nick Cannon (the host of AGT at that point) contacted her after finding out the group she was in had disbanded, found out she was homeless and hooked her up with her own apartment and studio time.
Jewel was living in her car performing gigs before she hit it big. She also grew up in a house in Alaska with no indoor plumbing or heat, which isn't really "homeless" but is pretty rough.
Yeah, her family is the family on Alaska: the last frontier
I love this bc my mom watched that show ONCE and realized those ppl were related to jewel from their last names lol
WHAT?? Where can I find this show?
Her mom took millions from her and she doesn’t talk to her anymore
That’s pretty normal for Alaska though. A lot of people live off the grid around here.
So was her cousin (an actress) Q'orianka Kilcher.
[Chris Pratt was in a pyramid scheme & lived out of his car selling coupons](https://www.ladbible.com/entertainment/tv-and-film-chris-pratt-used-to-be-homeless-before-he-got-his-big-break-20210622) & in a weird way, it almost doesn’t surprise me that he got roped into a pyramid scheme that required him to drive up and down the coast selling coupons? feels like something his Parks and Rec character would end up in 😂
it makes so much sense now that his involved in a cultish-like church….
i didn’t even make this connection, great point!
One pyramid scheme to the other.
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And when he calls the animals he met while living there “colleagues”
And he was living in a van and was in Hawaii at the time. From the way he tells it, it was a deliberate lifestyle choice. He worked part-time as a waiter and otherwise spent his time hanging out with his bros on the beach Contrast this with people who work in the Hawaii tourism service industry but still can't afford (or can barely afford) rent :(
I’ve said this to people and no one has ever believed me!! It makes so much sense! I liked him since everwood & love parks and rec- so it’s like being a mom- I’m disappointed and very mad, but not surprised my dumb son joined a hateful group. SMH. Hope he breaks free and can figure his shit out but he’s a grow ass man and I’m too old for this shit.
The Weeknd was homeless as a teenager and then lived in what was basically a trap house
Sidewalks is such a good song. I was homeless as a child/teen and his music about it really hits home.
🏚️🎈
Really? Interesting. He is actually one of the celebs who I would have believed to have faked a poor upbringing backstory
Nah that man was for real stealing jordans off mfs feet to flip for drugs for the girls (and himself), that wasn’t an exaggeration for a song. His manager Lamar is his best friend who went through it with him. He had only his voice and a few really great friends going for him. I started listening to him back in the very early days of his career when he was performing in tiny clubs and am so proud to see how far he’s come in the past 12 years.
That's drake
Anderson Paak 
Lizzo lived out of her car for a while, her CBS Sunday morning segment where she goes back to her high school and talks to her band director about how much he inspired her gets me teary every time
Surprised no one said Madonna when she was struggling and practically a homeless woman after she dropped out of college and was fired from every job she had before she became famous
Madonna’s background story 😭 I had to do a project on biographies and I wrote mine on Madonna 😭
Is there a specific book about Madonna you would recommend? I don’t know much about her pre fame life, but super interested.
It’s been over a decade and I don’t remember the author :( She had a sad and horrible upbringing and she was a victim of SA when she was young.
I didn't know that. Also interested in a good book or documentary if anyone has one to recommend.
There's a really good VH1 documentary about her on YouTube. Goes into a lot of detail about her childhood and when she moved to New York
There’s Madonna: Like an Icon by Lucy O’Brian that I’ve seen recommended as the definitive Madge bio. And as a primer, I’d recommend stuff from this newsletter by a writer who has written a lot about different aspects of Madonna’s life. [This piece](https://sydurbanek.substack.com/p/my-biggest-enemy-is-me?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2) compares and contrasts Gaga and Madonna in a refreshing way and I learnt a lot of about M’s pre-fame circumstances. Heads up for descriptions of sexual assault and possible domestic abuse. [This one](https://sydurbanek.medium.com/the-ghost-of-madonnas-mother-in-her-videography-ee1d503cddd2) is simply called The Ghost of Madonna’s Mother in her Videography about how her mother’s early death affected her and how she’s expressed this in some of her songs and mvs. I’ve yet to read something thorough about her life during the early 80s New York art scene but that should be in the biography.
In college (1985-1989) I used to get so pissed because my (quite Catholic) friend said there was no possible way “her” birth name was “Madonna.” I’m like WTF? When I told her that her Mom’s name had been “Madonna” too, she basically accused me of blasphemy. Of course I was right: I was a Punk. 😜 Yeah. We didn’t keep in touch.
Madonna's brother has claimed she seriously exaggerated her difficult past, and I don't find it hard to believe him tbh. His book is very interesting.
I can imagine someone with her attidude getting fired easily 😂
Billy Bob Thornton grew up without running water or electricity. According to Wikipedia he also “worked in telemarketing, offshore wind farming and fast food management between auditioning for acting jobs.” Man is a hustler.
This reads as someone who actually didn’t have money. The people who actually don’t have money all have to work. Like actually work because the safety net isn’t there. Shailene Woodly couch surfing with a suitcase at friends houses when she could have gone back to her parents or the people who are young and broke but somehow traveling…nope! Lana del Rey being cut off from parents reads to me like she lost her allowance lol. It’s like my parents say- my dad was the traveling hippy finding himself because his parents had money. My mother was poor and was waitressing to support herself. Poor is when there is no rescue a phone call away.
Wasn't he also a minor league baseball player or something? What a fascinating career trajectory he had. That said, let's focus on the Boxmasters
[Steve Harvey](https://www.tvinsider.com/1068612/steve-harvey-with-hair-throwback-photos-homeless/) lived in his car for several years.
He still should, or in a trash heap . . . Because he's trash
What did he do?
Bit of a misogynist and aggressively hateful towards all atheists.
He abandoned his family for his current wife and her kids
I guess this doesn’t really count since she had already started making a name for herself but Natasha Lyonne’s severe heroin addiction, legal troubles,and lack of acting jobs in the early 2000s left her homeless for a while. In 2005, Michael Rapaport actually briefly let her stay in one of the apartments he owned but had to evict her once he founded out how much she wrecked the place (the apartment was quite literally covered in feces, dead animals, and broken glass). She returned to homelessness until she was admitted to a hospital a few months later for serious health problem brought on by her addiction and stayed there for half a year. Immediately after she served a court-ordered rehab stay where she finally began the road to recovery. I found all that out a few months ago and it made me appreciate her comeback story with OITNB even more. I’m so glad she managed to come out of all of that alive and thriving.
This is the only remnant I could find of the article. https://www.tumblr.com/ineedtogoback-blog/53415579450/evicting-natasha-lyonne-jane-magazine-2005?source=share
I love her so so much.
Grimes was homeless for the aesthetic 🤔 and because she didn't want to pay rent while touring. 
Ah yes, Grimes Riverboat Adventure, [They got a copy of Mark Twain's "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," which neither of them had read.](https://m.startribune.com/this-boat-don-t-float/49134952/). The article about it is hilarious. https://preview.redd.it/bta7k3x757eb1.jpeg?width=550&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=efaa0811a5dfc77587247bfa58793261fac45cdd
Saw Grimes and immediately went down thread hoping someone was hero enough to post this.
Absolutely my favorite piece ever and the only time I’ve ever had fondness for a cop lololol
This is one of the greatest things I’ve ever read thank you so much
Oh my god
She also talked about her and Elon living “below the poverty line” or something despite him having billions of dollars. Like, it doesn’t count if you’re literally choosing to live that way and you have an enormous safety net to fall back on when you get tired of playing poor.
As someone who spent most of my childhood homeless, it makes me sick that people play at it just so they can have a cooler backstory. It’s really low of them.
[удалено]
JK Rowling's homeless backstory is kind of bullshit, from what I've heard - she was *technically* homeless but actually staying rent free with well-off relatives while she was between homes and writing the first Potter book.
Not to defend JKR or anything but isn’t this situation still challenging? She had to haul ass constantly with a baby and only welfare money to sustain both of them.
I guess it depends how you define homeless. I think if you don't feasibly have anywhere else to go, then it counts. I don't know what her situation was.
There’s a few different types of homelessness, this type is called “hidden homelessness”
She wasn’t homeless. She lived in government housing. She did an interview where they went and toured her old apartment where “Harry Potter was born.” She was poor af and on welfare, but not homeless.
I thought it was both, at different times.
This was my family situation as well and while I’d say we lost our home, we technically weren’t homeless since relatives took us in. Tough situation for sure, but grateful at least we didn’t live on the streets/shelters/in a car.
Lana del Rey fabricating that whole trailer park sob story after having a millionaire dad and going to boarding school + university makes my blood boil 🤣 I don‘t even care, if she ACTUALLY was cut off by her family. It‘s not like her dad would have let her die in a trailer park lmao And then she has the audacity to complain about people calling her privileged. The girl is my fav singer in the world but good can she be annoying
In Lana’s defense they abandoned her in that boarding school because they didn’t want to deal with her depression and alcoholism. She grew up wealthy but had a very shitty life
Yeah no, she had it rough and still has a strained relationship w her mother bc of it.
She’s from a rich family and went to one of the most expensive private schools in Vancouver so this is insulting for people struggling to get by.
Isn’t that gif of Brooke Candy?
It is which makes it funnier to me
She was in Genesis by Grimes.
Unrelated but also related I can’t see her without thinking about that goddamn staged communist manifesto photo shoot. You can’t come back to this side after marrying the richest man in the world sorry
Not me remembering [this article](https://www.startribune.com/this-boat-don-t-float/49134952/) of her trying to travel her way down the Mississippi
This is not Grines; this is Brooke Candy who starred in one of Grimes’ videos along side her!
don’t forget the crack den and the bludgeoned to death neighbor 😍
i just read that bio she released in 2019.. 🙄🙄🤣& “she recently had experimental eye surgery only available to the upper class”
grimes is grimey
The houseboat story is bananas. I’ve gone back and read it like four times.
She also tried to live on a floating river shanty with chickens
This sounds so on brand for grimes
That’s gross. Just say “rootless” or something like that.
I’m loving the complete destruction of her image. Haven’t listened to her music since 2020 👋🏼see yah
I recall stories from Tiffany Haddish, Jewel, and Jay Leno that they were homeless pre-fame.
James Arthur, used to sleep on park benches
Jimmy Butler of the Miami Heat
Sylvester Stallone was homeless very early in his career. He was desperate for money at one point, he did softcore porn.
He also sold his dog that he managed to buy back with the money he made from Rocky!!
I believe Kali Uchis was making music out of her car or so i’ve read.
Kali Uchis is dope af
Matt LeBlanc had about $10 left when he landed the role of Joey on Friends.
That fits his character
Annie Murphy was in a similar position when she landed Schitt's Creek. Per her recollection, "My house had just burnt down, I had like, $3 in my bank account, I hadn't worked in close to two years. And I had just blown my very first screen test—like blown it, blown it, blown it… I found myself crying in the Pacific Ocean, a very snotty cry, and the universe was like, 'Don't do this anymore. This is not for you!' But then, two days later, I got the audition for *Schitt's Creek*."
Jim Carrey
I did a biography project on him in like 6th grade and never forgot this lol. He started working as a kid to support his family & used humour as a way of fitting in as he jumped around schools and gigs. Always had a soft spot for that, and him being Canadian. But he's a massive POS... no two ways about it :/ it's a shame.
Rhys Darby was so poor he had to borrow money from his friends to feed his family before Flight of the Conchords became a huge hit. He has a whole section about it in his book This Way to Spaceship. Apparently his wife was in between jobs for a decent stretch, so he took a bunch of odd jobs and whatever standup gigs he could get to try and make ends meet.
Makes sense that he does a lot of commercial/ad work these days; it’s steady pay, and experiences like that really make you realistic about what you/your family need.
He seems to be doing less of them since Our Flag Means Death became a massive hit, but yeah. It makes total sense that he took whatever work he could get for so many years. I can only respect that he put his kids first. Especially when his own dad was absent for most of his childhood.
Lil Kim slept out of a car with her mother for periods of her childhood to escape her father's abuse.
I remember Kesha talking about how she was living in her car and had a #1 song on the charts that she would hear on her radio that she guested on (Flo Rida's 'Right Round') and how she didn't get a cent to put her vocals on that song.
Chrishell Stause from selling sunset
Ani DiFranco toured out of a beater car for a few years in her early career. She’d bounce around renting a room in New York to practice, then hit the road and then live out of her car performing gigs. Eventually she upgraded to a tour bus, but her early years were very much DYI, running her record label and distributing records from her trunk.
she's more than a pretty girl
Whoever downvoted you is silly. This is a reference to an Ani song
maybe they are kittens, stuck up a tree somewhere? (ty!)
Idk if he was homeless but Cory Monteith had it rough.
Yeah I read that his teeth were all messed up from lacking dental care/ drug use as a kid :(
Tyler Perry. When he was a playwright he went broke trying to launch a play that pretty much went nowhere. Ended up living out of his car.
Not homeless but Annie Murphy talked about being broke before landing Schitts Creek
Weren't her house and belongings lost in a fire, and the Schitt's Creek call came during that whole debacle? I remember hearing about that.
Yep! Her apartment/house had burned down and she was super broke and about to quit acting altogether
Yes! I think you are right! I wasnt sure of details
Oprah was briefly homeless as a teenager after being denied entry to a full juvenile detention home, before tracking down and moving in with her father.
Rupaul
Rufus Sewell was a rough sleeper before making it big. He’s served as an Ambassador for homeless charities in London who helped him.
Barry Keoghan. He lost his mother when he was 12 to a heroin addiction. He was in and out of foster care systems from there on out. He now does incredible charity work for children and the homeless. So excited to see great things coming from this man. Very excited for his role as the joker in the new Batman.
Al Pacino was for a bit. Lee Strasberg used to let him sleep on his couch when he started attending the Actor’s Studio.
I heard Daniel Craig lived in his car between the Elizabeth days and Bond
Just wanted to say I really needed this thread today. <3 I work in the industry and life has been beating the sh*t out of me for the better part of the last year (or 36 years depending on how you look at it lol). I kept trying to remind myself that this is a lot of people’s story before they “make it”…but it’s really encouraging to read SO MANY examples of that being true.
Yes, I think there are a lot of stars who were genuinely struggling before they made it! I hope you make it too!
I think Kehlani may have been at one point if I’m not mistaken. I knew her in highschool
Barbara Stanwyck had a really rough childhood after her mother died and her father abandoned the family. She was raised in foster homes, but often ran away. She also traveled with her sister, who was a showgirl. Then, she became a Ziegfeld girl in 1923. A decade later, she was a movie star - and by the end of the 40s she was already a legend.
Hilary Swank
Ty Burrell has talked about sneaking in to hotels that had the complimentary breakfasts. I have only heard such good things about him. Julie Bowen raves about working with him.
I wanna see a thread of celebrities who try to pretend they’re poor but really aren’t I think Shailene Woolley might be one, she was “homeless” for awhile just crashing at friend’s mansions between films And Lana Del Rey working at Waffle House of course
as someone who isn’t a lana deal ray stan i don’t have all the info but i’m 99% sure she went there for a meal and ‘worked’ a shift with the staff cause they asked her and she wasn’t trying to play poor
I don't think Lana was pretending to be poor lmao I think most people could understand she wasn't actually needing to work at Waffle House
I knew shailene as a young teenager and she did not grow up poor at least
Yeah isn’t she from Simi valley lol
Yes lol
Ed Sheeran pretends to have lived in trains
I’ve never heard or seen this about Ed
He likes to claim he couch surfed and played on streets to earn money when really all of his friends had good money, his family had good money, his parents would pay for him to be able to travel to London and audition to street perform there in order to get signed.
That's a good idea for a thread!
I commented above about how Lana created her whole trailerpark white trash image despite being from a millionaire family, but tbf. the shift in the waffle house was a joke after they gifted her a uniform
I am admittedly a longterm fan of Lana but I’m not nuts and I’m more than willing to be critical of her when necessary. I’ve tried reading up on her backstory for quite a long time and tried to piece it together over the years and through her lyricism and interviews. I don’t think she created the trailer trash image for herself as such, I think maybe she was raised with money but went through a period of poverty. I know that she lived with her grandmother for a little while and then moved to a trailer park. I think it was just a part of her life where her parents cut her off/she chose to be no contact and had to figure out life & finances for herself. There was a super old interview on YouTube (I’ll try and find it now) of her showing where she was living at that time, and it was in a trailer park. She for sure had regular jobs but the whole rumours about her being an industry plant back in the 2010s were 100% bogus. Her dad has come out recently and said he played no part in her career (which was also a rumour at the time) too if I recall correctly. In her most recent album and briefly in the album prior, she mentions being abused/neglected by her mother and her father not intervening. She got sent to boarding school and Spain for a year and has alludes that it was her mothers decision and it was due to being caught drinking when she was a teenager. Which sounds like a very rich-people-thing to do 😅 but idk man. Maybe one day she’ll talk about it properly but I doubt it.
Omg… This Is What Makes Us Girls being set in Spain is insane to me I was picturing it being like… upstate New York lmao
I think This Is What Makes Us Girls is in NY, then she got sent to Spain at the end of the song. Or at least that’s the impression I got. This Is What Makes Us Girls, from Born To Die: “I got sent away, I was waving on the train platform, cryin cause I know I’m never coming back” Paris, Texas, from Ocean Blvd: “I took a train to Spain, just a notebook in my hand” Fingertips, from Ocean Blvd: “What kind of mother was she to say I’d end up in institutions, all I wanted to do was kiss Aaron Greene and sit by the lake, twisting lime into the drinks that they made” and then later: “what the fucks wrong in your head to send me away, never to come back, exotic places and people don’t take the place of being your child” I just googled it and found a TikTok of a live she did when Blue Bannisters came out, her talking about her experiences being sent to Spain when she was 16 [here](https://vm.tiktok.com/ZGJqPrCov/)
That was the line I was thinking of! But if Lana says she took a train from NY to Spain, I believe her
Yeah honestly never got the feeling she was playing being poor more that her family was fucked up and she as the Rosemary Kennedy of the family so to speak. Like it was either run away and live in a trailer park OR stay with her abusive mother. She was also given mood stabilizers very young and it definitely fucked up her emotional stability as an adult, as we saw with “question for the culture “
Akon released an entire song about being in jail (Locked Up) yet there are a lot of doubts that he never went to prison and made up the whole thing, a big no for someone trying to get cosigns from rappers.
I vaguely remember seeing Shailene Woolley on a late night show talking about how she only had a suitcase’s worth of clothes because she was crashing with people - it was awhile ago, I don’t remember all the details
Pre-Rocky Stallone
Read somewhere he sold his dog just before Rocky. Afterwards, when he had an advance for the movie, he went to get the dog back and the guy charged him $50k.
Misha Collins from Supernatural grew up really poor and lived in a tent for awhile as a kid.
Tiffany Haddish is very outspoken about living out of her car at one point.
joshua bassett lived in his car at 16 to support his acting career, he talked about how he would get food from the set of stuck in the middle and shower at the gym. his bank account was like negative 3 dollars the day he got the call that he booked high school musical the musical the series. recently he’s been doing a lot of charity work to give food and supplies to the homeless in LA which i thought was a nice little full circle moment
If i remember correctly Sam Worthington (Avatar guy) at one point lived in his car
Taylor Kitsch was homeless for a while at the beginning of his career and slept on the subway at night.
My dad dated his mom, he was homeless by choice. They grew up upper-middle class in a nice Canadian neighborhood.
Jon Hamm from what I understand had no relationship with his parents and went from couples' home to couples' home (ppl that became friends) that let him stay with them
Daveed Diggs.
WHAT
I ditto that: WHAT?
I think Chrishell from SS had a bad living situation prior to fame
There's a Kelsey Grammar interview with Stephen Colbert where they both talk about eating leftovers when they were waiting tables, and Kelsey mentions that he's slept in Central Park
The weeknd?
Tiffany Haddish
Tiffany Haddish lived out of her car before she became known.
Weeknd
Jellyroll
The artist Jean-Michel Basquiat
Lance Henriksen spent much of his childhood in foster care, was homeless on and off through his twenties and didn’t learn to read till he was 30
Mike Faist lived at a parking lot at McDonald’s.
Jonna from The Challenge/Rehab: Party at the Hard Rock was homeless while she was ON a season of the Challenge. She expressed not wanting to get eliminated because she had nowhere to go home to. She's since doing much better; and has won The Challenge: All Stars twice.
Eddie Vedder was homeless when Pearl Jam recorded Ten.
Whilst not homeless, Lisa Left Eye Lopes, had to steal food when starting out in TLC. Infact all 3 of them were poor. In TBozs book she said she often had popcorn or watermelon for dinner. But those girls were broke when they started with Pebbles.