Hollywood loves money. And talent. But this does not mean
you necessarily need both to make it there. While most actors and entertainers grew up in
what we would call “normal” households, never experiencing financial struggles,
there were others who were forced to live in a car or out in the streets,
with some even having to worry about where their next meal would come from.
These celebrities changed potato sack clothing to designers’ gowns,
sleeping in the streets to million-dollar mansions and trailers to fancy cars.
They came from humble beginnings but at some point decided they were not going to
live the lives expected of them. And it worked! Stay tuned to learn what ordeals and financial
turmoils your favourite stars had to go through before coming to prominence. Subscribe to our
channel and hit the notification bell to always know when we publish new videos!
Selena Gomez Unlike many of her industry mates,
this singer and actress was not born with a silver spoon in her mouth.
Long before rising to stardom Selena Gomez had to learn what life in poverty looked like in reality,
not on the blue screen. Born to a 16-year-old mother in a small town of Tinseltown, Texas,
she learned the taste of bitterness and financial struggles that most of her peers were secured
from. Raising a kid in the 90-s was tough, let alone the support from a partner. Selena’s parents
divorced when she was a toddler, but luckily she was taken care of by her grandparents.
However, the family was not well-off and could barely make their ends meet,
eventually prompting little Selena to scrounge in the car seats for change to buy ramen noodles.
In one of her interviews, the hitmaker recalled her mom working multiple jobs just to scrape by,
as well as eating spaghetti for dinner on a regular basis. Fortunately for all of us,
it didn’t take long before Gomez made her way into the entertainment industry,
landing a role on a Barney and Friends TV show in 2002. Though it might sound ironic, Selena's
humble beginnings actually proved useful. The entertainer joined numerous initiatives to raise
awareness to global poverty and is now actively involved in charity work related to the issue.
Daniel Craig
We are so used to seeing this handsome man in a tuxedo with a glass of Martini in his hand
on screen, that it barely crosses our mind that our favourite agent James Bond was once homeless.
Acting career has never been easy, and it’s hard to guess at the beginning of the path
if a bet on talent and charisma will one day pay off. Daniel Craig was no exception to this game.
The future star fell on hard times trying to make it big in London and had to take odd jobs to make
ends meet, including working as a waiter. However, it did not secure him from housing troubles that
many Londoners are familiar with. At some point, things got so bad for Craig that he
had literally to sleep on a park bench at night. Luckily for all us, Daniel’s story had a happy
ending. His hard work did pay off in the end, raising his estimated net worth to $160 million.
Jim Carrey (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JmNKGfFj7w 0:01)
Stories of this actor can easily make you laugh, but it's no laughing matter when it comes to his
childhood and upbringing. One of the greatest comedy talents alive, Jim Carrey, was born to
what he described as a low middle class family. But reminiscing of that time in the interviews,
the Hollywood favourite mentioned that at some point, they were so poor that all five of them,
including his three siblings, had to live out of a car. The future star of The Mask was only
12 when his father lost his job. The family was eventually kicked out of their home and
forced to live in a van. Carrey said it felt like, quote “a traumatic kick in the guts”.
But the future actor was not ready to accept the misfortune. He proved his character's strength by
taking a difficult decision to quit high school at the age of 15 to take a job as a janitor to
help support his family. Soon Carrey started doing stand-up comedy that eventually got him
to Hollywood hills. And we are happy that things turned so great for him in the end.
Demi Moore
We bet you can hardly imagine what hides behind the perfect smile of this A-list star.
Once the highest-paid actress of all time, Demi Moore confessed her family life was
troubled from the outset,
as her biological father walked out before she was even born. The girl was born cross-eyed
and developed a kidney dysfunction, which led to numerous hospitalizations and several surgeries.
Though Moore’s mother remarried when her daughter was three, the match was far from perfect,
as Moore remembers the household being filled with abuse and alcoholism. Her life was hit by
tragedy when her stepfather committed suicide. The Striptease star was 18 then. By the way,
she was paid a lump sum of $12.5m to star in this movie, breaking the record for the highest-paid
actress of all time. Moore is a woman who had a lot of pain in her life, yet managed to find her
calm and confidence already in her middle age. It looks like she has been able to relinquish,
as she herself calls it “the narrative I believed … that I was unworthy and contaminated.”
Sylvester Stallone
It might seem that the Rocky star has been meant for troubleshooting and can easily cope with any
hardship. Stallone, however, had to go through plenty of failures before hitting it big in
Hollywood. While his road to rising to stardom came long before the subprime mortgage crisis,
Sylvester Stallone experienced what housing problems were back then.
He was pursuing a career in acting in the early 70s,
when was kicked off from the NYC apartment that he rented for failing to pay the bills.
The soon-to-be star did not find anything better than to sleep at a bus station for several weeks.
This is when he found a casting notice for a soft-core film for adults and landed the job.
“I was broke and basically sleeping in the Port Authority bus station for three weeks straight.
I read in a trade paper about this film that was paying $100 a day — for
a $100 a day I would wreak havoc. Instead of doing something desperate,
I worked for two days for $200 and got myself out of the bus station," he shared.
Well, although this particular film did not jumpstart his career,
it definitely saved him from the fate of a homeless person.
Sarah Jessica Parker
It's hard to believe that the actress behind the character of columnist and fashionista,
Carrie Bradshaw, from the TV hit Sex and the City was ever poor.
Obviously, Sarah Jessica Parker did a great job working hard to make it seem
as if she was born a golden girl. The TV star comes from a big family. Being one of eight
children, she recalled going through financial struggles while growing up.
“We were on welfare. I remember being poor. There
was no great way to hide it,” she shared in one of her interviews.
Parker said there were times when they did not have electricity at home cause neither her mother,
father, or stepfather were making enough to support the family and pay the bills. The
family even had to cut on Christmas and birthdays celebrations sometimes since there was simply no
money to spare. Can you imagine being probably the only kid on the block without a birthday party?
When the times were particularly rough, the family would receive
calls from collectors and the phone company saying, 'We're shutting your phones off.'
It does sound like a lot to take in, but Sex and The City Star does not seem to hold a grudge about
her childhood. She says that harsh experience taught her a lot of life lessons and specifically
taught her to invest. Well, we hope she has a good financial adviser with the money she’s making now.
The fifty-six year-old actress’s net worth is believed to be $150 million now.
Oprah Winfrey
She’s probably the most highly-paid interviewer in the world with an astonishing net worth
of 2.7 billion dollars. But it was a long and tough journey for her to get here. The first lady
of talk shows battled through grinding poverty and a troubled childhood to become the most powerful
woman on American TV. Born in rural Mississippi to a single teenage mother, she went through a
lot of distress. Oprah’s mom had to send her to grandmother shortly after her birth, heading to
Wisconsin to seek a job herself. The kid spent six years of her life living in rural poverty.
Their finances were so dire that her grandma had to resort to dressing her in old potato sacks,
the top TV interviewer recollected. A child to a dysfunctional family,
Winfrey made a shocking revelation sharing that she was abused by several of her family members.
Feeling broken and neglected by her mother, Oprah left home, opting for a
life on treacherous streets of Milwaukee. She managed to overcome her burdensome childhood
and adolescence and come to prominence, giving us a chance to enjoy the talented work of hers.