9 Celebrities Born Without Silver Spoons

We all dream of living like a celebrity, with lavish parties, the best liquor and the most exotic vacations. While our lives may seem drab compared to all that glitz and glamor, it is a little known fact that many of the most famous celebs had a distinctly non-glamorous start. Some have even suffered hardships, violence and social problems. Meet the 9 rough-start celebrities who were born without silver spoons.

1. Demi Moore

Born to a cocaine addicted father and a 19 year old girl, Demi Moore found herself being raised by her young mother and drunkard stepfather. To make matters worse, her stepfather was a struggling traveling salesman and the family had to be constantly on the road.

2. Jewel

Growing up in rural Alaska to a father who earned a meager living by singing in bars, Jewel had to spend her childhood in a house with no internal heating (not easy in Alaska!). Even after she began to pursue her career as a performer, she was often reduced to living in a van and eking out a living by performing in bars like her father did.

3. Shania Twain

Part of a poor Ontario family with four other children, Shania Twain often had to go to school hungry because her parents did not have the money to buy groceries. She has said she had to silently endure her empty tummy as she lacked the courage to ask other children for food. She also spent some time in a Toronto shelter. When her parents were killed in a car crash, Shania was left to raise her younger siblings.

4. Eminem

Born to a 15 year old girl and a 19 year old man who abandoned her half a year after Eminem was born, the rapper and his mother formed one of only three white households in a lower middle class neighborhood in Detroit. This made them victims of attacks by other residents of the area as his young mother struggled to raise him. No silver spoons in 8 Mile.

5. Leonardo DiCaprio

DiCaprio had the misfortune of growing up on the wrong side of the LA tracks, with a prostitution ring at his street corner. Surrounded by drugs, violence and hookers, DiCaprio took to acting as a means of escaping this life. Now he has silver spoons and a Golden Globe.

6. Jim Carrey

Carrey was born to a struggling musician father who worked a “regular job” to feed his children. The family’s world fell apart when he lost his job. Going rapidly from lower middle class to poor, the family was reduced to living in a camper van. The future superstar had to take up work at the age of 15 to help the family’s finances.

7. Sarah Jessica Parker

The future Sex and the City star was born to a couple who divorced when Parker was a child. With three other children, Parker’s schoolteacher mother was left to raise all four by herself. She married a truck driver and accounts executive, but he did not have a regular income. Instead, he added four more children to the brood, and Parker was reduced to supporting her family through acting at a young age.

8. Naomi Watts

Born to a family that broke up four years after her birth, Watts was raised by a mother who lacked the money to comfortably support her and her brother. She resorted to blackmail to get Naomi’s grandparents to pay for their upbringing. In fact, the children lived with their grandparents for three years as her mother struggled to get her life in order. Sadly, her birth father died of a heroine overdose in 1976.

9. Mariah Carey

Before she was a diva, young Mariah was forced to move 13 times during her childhood thanks to the dire financial straits her divorced mother frequently found herself in. Mariah recalls how they often had no place to stay. Worse, with her mother’s unconventional habits, Mariah was left to manage herself frequently. Now she can buy all the silver spoons she wants.