The Biggest Celebs With the Humblest Beginnings

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There’s not much that’s more inspiring than a good rags-to-riches story, and some of the humblest beginnings can be found amongst the biggest Hollywood stars.

Not many people consider the fact that many of their favorite celebrities, despite now raking in millions of dollars and living lavish lives, were once very ordinary people. Even more surprising is that some of these celebs didn’t just start out ordinary—they were downright impoverished.

These are the people who went from the bottom to the top, powering through every obstacle that came their way, and their stories inspire us to believe that we can overcome our own challenges and reach our dreams.

And that’s the thing about dreams: we all have them, and whether our aspirations are to finish college, get a promotion, raise a family, or to simply to become self-sufficient, we can do it. Sometimes, though, we just need a little reminder that others have overcome even the most dire situations, and have gone on to flourish.

You can do that, too. But just in case you need a reminder, read on to find a few of the biggest celebrities with the humblest beginnings. You’ll come away with the realization that you, too, have the potential for greatness.

Leonardo DiCaprio

Believe it or not, one of Hollywood’s leading men started out as a poor kid on the streets of Los Angeles.

In an interview with Los Angeles Times, the actor said that he grew up “very poor,” in a bad neighborhood which was rife with drugs and prostitution. DiCaprio, as he says, “got to see the other side of the spectrum” early in life.

Today, DiCaprio has come a long way from living in a place marked by alleyway heroin abuse and dangerous streets. The actor has often chosen projects which challenged him as an actor, rather than those that would give a guaranteed huge payout.

His long-term strategy has paid off, as DiCaprio is now one of the most recognizable faces in the world, and has a net worth of around 245 million dollars.

He attributes his drive to those early days, when he realized that he wanted to escape, asking his mother to put him in acting classes. She did, pulling him out of high school to do so.

It wasn’t long before Robert De Niro picked him up for his 1992 film, This Boy’s Life, which began DiCaprio’s long and storied career.

His upbringing had one more effect on the young actor—he won’t touch drugs. "That's because I saw this stuff literally every day when I was 3 or 4 years old,” he says. “So Hollywood was a walk in the park for me.”

Rather than allowing his humble beginnings to hold him back, he used his experiences to drive him forward. You can do the same.

Tom Cruise

It’s no secret that Tom Cruise is one of Hollywood’s biggest—and most eccentric—stars. But did you know he also had one of the most difficult upbringings in all of Hollywood, as well?

Cruise grew up with an abusive father who, as Cruise told People, “was a bully and a coward—the person where, if something goes wrong, they kick you.” He went on to say that his childhood experience with his father “was a great lesson in my life, how he’d lull you in, make you feel safe and then, bang!”

Cruise’s mother left his father, taking him and his sister with her. It would be ten years before Cruise saw his father again as the man lay dying of cancer.

By the time Cruise was 14, he had attended 15 different schools across the U.S. and Canada, and struggled with dyslexia. After a year of college, after which he dropped out due to a lack of funds, he moved to New York, taking jobs as a busboy at Mortimer’s restaurant and as an Assistant Superintendent for a building on Amsterdam Avenue.

All the while, though, Cruise took advantage of the New York’s excellent acting classes, and landed his first role in the 1981 film, Endless Love. From there, his box office appeal exploded into what we know today, starring in some of the biggest films of the past decades.

Cruise still battles the demons of his childhood abuse, but nonetheless, he’s found immense success, sporting a net worth of around 470 million dollars today.

Oprah Winfrey

If there is one quintessential rags-to-riches story in Hollywood, it’s the tale of Oprah Winfrey.

Winfrey, who is today worth around 3.1 billion—that’s right, billion—dollars once wore potato sacks because her family didn’t have enough money to buy clothing.

Before she became a media sensation, Winfrey had a financially tough childhood, shuffled between family members while her teenage mom searched for work. At 6 years of age, Winfrey was sent to a Milwaukee boarding house to live with her mother, where her extreme poverty not only continued, but was made worse by years of physical abuse by the owner of the house.

At 9, she was raped by her 19-year-old cousin, and this sexual abuse would go on until she was 14, when her mother told her that “you are getting your ass out of this house.”

She left for her father’s house, unknowingly pregnant. Two weeks after giving birth, the child died.

It was her father’s direction and sense of structure, though, that helped her through this time. For the first time ever, she had a stable environment, where she began to thrive academically and socially.

She soon secured a full scholarship to Tennessee State University, but left early to become the first black female news anchor at Nashville’s WLAC-TV. There’s she was sexually harassed and humiliated, and was fired less than eight months later.

But even this didn’t stop her. She went on to host AM Chicago, which she took from the lowest-rated talk show in Chicago to the highest, all within the space of months.

Not long after, she began The Oprah Winfrey Show, and the rest is history.

If Oprah Winfrey can overcome the worst childhood imaginable and achieve her dreams, imagine what you can do.

Jay-Z

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With a net worth of around 810 million dollars, Jay-Z is one of the most highly-paid musicians in the industry. What many don’t know is that he grew up absolutely poor in Brooklyn’s drug-infested Marcy Projects, and that he deals with this childhood in many of his songs.

The youngest of four siblings, Jay-Z, whose real name is Shawn Corey Carter, was born to Gloria Carter and Adnes Reeves. When Jay-Z was 11 years old, his father abandoned the family, leaving them destitute.

The Marcy housing projects, where he grew up, was marked by violence, gangs, and gun-culture. This had an effect on the young boy, and he soon became a crack cocaine dealer who would go on to shoot his own brother for stealing his jewelry.

His interest in music was sparked when he was given a boom box for his birthday, after which he began rapping and writing lyrics inspired by popular artists of the time.

In 1989, this paid off, and the rapper Jaz-O became his mentor, teaching him the basics of rap—Jay-Z’s stage name is an homage to Jaz-O, as well as an allusion to “Jazzy,” which was Jay-Z’s childhood nickname.

Today, Jay-Z is the second-riches hip hop artist in America, and his work resides among Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. Married to Beyoncé, the couple’s net worth now exceeds 1.16 billion dollars.

Not bad for a kid who started at the bottom.

Jennifer Lopez

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While she’s not as often in the limelight today, actress, dancer, fashion designer, and musician Jennifer Lopez is still one of the most recognizable names in Hollywood.

Would you have guessed that she was once homeless?

Lopez grew up as the middle-child, between two sisters, in a tiny apartment in The Bronx, New York. Her family was relatively poor, and her parents stressed a disciplined work ethic and the importance of being able to speak English so that their children might be successful.

But rather than using that discipline and drive to fuel a college education, Lopez chose to dance, causing friction between her and her mother.

Lopez spent many nights sleeping on a cot at a dance studio, homeless and wondering if she had a future. Fortunately, within a year, she found a place on “In Living Color,” and in the time since, became a major movie star, platinum-selling singer, and a fashion entrepreneur.

Today, she continues to teach her kids the value of hard work, thinking back on her father, who worked nights to support the family, and to her mother, who worked at a school and sold Tupperware to help them get by.

“I love Los Angeles, but it doesn’t give me strength the way the Bronx did,” she told New York Daily News. It was that strength that got Lopez where she is today, with a net worth of around 360 million dollars.

Jim Carrey

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Would you believe that comedy veteran Jim Carrey, the rubbery-faced star of Ace Ventura, Dumb and Dumber, The Mask, and countless other films, lived in a van for part of his childhood?

Carrey’s upbringing in Newmarket, Ontario was anything but funny. He and his three siblings lived an ordinary, middle-class life until his father lost his job at age 51. They lost their home, and soon after, found themselves living out of the family van, taking odd jobs where they could find them.

Carrey found work as a security guard, a janitor, and a factory worker—the latter job left him wanting to “bash somebody’s head in” when having to go directly from school to hard labor.

Carrey’s father, nevertheless, drove him out to Toronto so that he could debut his stage act—which promptly bombed, dealing Carrey a blow he nearly didn’t recover from.

Eventually, Carrey’s father found stable work, and they moved back into a home. With a better home life, Carrey found time to polish his act, and was quickly noticed by comedian Rodney Dangerfield, who signed Carrey to open his tour performances.

From there, Carrey’s career blossomed, and although he’s now taken a step back from stardom, his comedic contributions remain, and his net worth hovers around 150 million dollars.

The journey from living in a van to dwelling in a mansion in the foothills of the Santa Monica Mountains hasn’t been an easy one for Carrey, but the strength he gained during his struggles kept him from quitting.

J.K. Rowling

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While British author J.K. Rowling might not trot the streets of Los Angeles, she’s no less a celebrity than the others on this list. In fact, in many ways, her fame is even greater—her name, wise words, and work are beloved by fans all over the globe.

Hers is a rags-to-riches story that rivals any other, and one that continues to inspire many. Today, we know her as the acclaimed, billionaire author of the beloved “Harry Potter” series of books, but once, Rowling was a poor single mother struggling to make ends meet.

At age 25, Rowling’s mother died, an event which would resonate throughout her work. “My books are largely about death,” she told The Telegraph in 2006, a motif inspired by the passing of her mother.

Shortly after, Rowling moved to northern Portugal to begin anew, where she taught English as a foreign language. There she began dating a man named Jorge Arantes, became pregnant, and moved into a two-bedroom apartment with Aarentes’ mother. The two married in 1992, and she gave birth to a daughter in 1993. The marriage, however, lasted only a little over a year, and after the divorce, Rowling and her daughter moved back to the UK.

Jobless and living in poverty in a tiny apartment with her daughter, Rowling became depressed, and even considered suicide. She spent much of her free time writing “Harry Potter” in cafes with her daughter sleeping next to her.

By her own admission, she was “as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain without being homeless,” and considered herself to be “the biggest failure I knew.”

Even after she finished her first book, it was rejected numerous times by major publishers. Finally, though, Bloomsbury gave her a chance, and her work went on to sell more than 450 million copies, win awards, and be made into movies.

For all of you who are working toward your dreams, remember Rowling’s words. She thought herself a failure. She thought she was behind in life, and had no idea that between her and her dreams lay just a little more work.

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