What are some famous people with bad childhoods who became successful?

Answer 1

Three of The Beatles (John, Paul and Ringo) had difficult childhoods. John Lennon's was probably the hardest; his father disappeared shortly after John's birth and reappeared to force John (at the age of around 5) to choose between his mother and father - he chose his mother.

Not long after, social services agreed that John would be better off with his Aunt Mimi - John was oblidged to share a bed with his mother and her new boyfriend. As a teenager, he started to rebuild his relationship with his mother then his mother was killed in a road accident.

Paul's upbringing was less traumatic, but his mother died when he was 14 - one of the things that made Paul and John's relationship so close was the shared loss of their mothers.

Ringo's upbringing was similarly to John in that his father left shortly after Ringo was born. Ringo was also born in the Dingle (a slum area of Liverpool) into genuine poverty.

The actor James Garner had a bad childhood. His mother died when he was five and he was sent to live with relatives. He was reunited with his father when he remarried, but learned to hate his stepmother. She beat both him and his three brothers. Garner admitted that she used to dress him up in dresses in public to punish him. Eventually he finally engaged her in a physical fight and choked her to keep her from killing him. This ended the marriage to his father.

Late screen legend Barbara Stanwyck (1907 - 1990) was born to Irish/Canadian parents in Brooklyn, NY. She was the youngest of four children, two other girls and a boy. When she was four, her mother died after being knocked off of a trolley by a drunken passenger. She fractured her skull and never regained consciousness. Her father, terrified at the prospect of raising four children alone, volunteered to move to Panama to help build the Panama Canal; he never returned. Barbara, whose birth name was Ruby Stevens, was shuttled between her older sisters, and several foster homes, where she was not always treated the best. She had to drop out of school in the eight grade, and took on a series of various jobs, from telephone operator, department store stockgirl, waitress, and eventually as a taxi dancer in many of New York City's speakeasies. It was during this time she got connections on Broadway, which eventually took her to Hollywood, where she found great success. But her upbringing left her scarred, and she was unable to provide proper parenting to her adopted son Dion, with her first husband, Broadway actor Frank Fay. Dion criticized her for not being warm and affectionate.