Celeb Moms Who Have Adopted

Diane Keaton adopted both of her kids—daughter Dexter (pictured), adopted in 1996, and son Duke, adopted in 2001 — as a single mom in her 50s. “When I adopted, I immediately had to change as a person and become more giving,” the infinitely stylish Keaton, now 66, has said. “It made me realize that I was completely self-involved. I’m an actress after all. I didn’t have anyone to tell me how well I was doing, or if I was doing it right, which I was used to. I just wanted to say, ‘How am I doing? Do they like me?’ The loves of my life are my children and my mother. I don’t feel as if I need a man. Don’t get me wrong, I love men … [but] I have kids and my work. That’s fine with me.”

Single after her divorce at 35, Michelle Pfeiffer decided she “wasn’t going to not have children because I wasn’t married,” she told Britain’s daily Telegraph in 2009. Naturally, she met David E. Kelley, the would-be love of her life, two months after applying to adopt daughter Claudia Rose, now 18. “I was nervous about telling him, but I thought: ‘This will separate the men from the boys,'” she said. Happily, he was along for the ride. And the little family welcomed their son John Henry, now 17, just a year later. “Being a mother has helped me get out in the world and make friends I never would have made,” said the 54-year-old actress, who has been declared one of the world’s most all-time beautiful women. “It’s opened up my world, in a way.”

“Adoption is a very complicated road filled with incredibly emotional and challenging aspects,” said Jamie Lee Curtis, who adopted her kids Annie and Thomas, to Parents magazine last year. “At its core, adoption is about loss. It’s one that needs a lot of good support for everybody, so that everyone is clear about the feelings that are being stirred up for everyone,” said the forever youthful Curtis, 53. “It’s a complicated terrain but still a beautiful way to make a family. You have to just be really open to all sides of it.”

Much like her Sex & the City character Charlotte, Kristin Davis longed to be a mother. But the 47-year-old single actress thought adoption would be a longshot. “I didn’t think anyone would choose me, you know,” she told Anderson Cooper on his talk show last year. “I’m single, and I thought people wanted the white picket fence domestically.” Still, the fresh-faced actress got in touch with an agency in Haiti, and these days, she’s balancing Broadway and baby Gemma Rose, whom she brought home last summer. “It is terrifying, partly because with adoption you always know there’s the chance that it won’t work. So you’re on pins and needles.”

Friends—and husbands—may come and go, but family is forever. Kirstie Alley’s closest? Her two kids, William True, 21, and Lillie Price, 19, whom she adopted with ex-husband Parker Stevenson after struggles with infertility and miscarriages. “They are very protective of me,” the Dancing With the Stars diva told People. And she’s very protective of them, too. “My best quality is that I’m a good mother.”

These days, Mariska Hargitay is blissful with her brood of three—August (pictured, right), 6, and adopted kids Amaya (pictured, left), nearly two, and Andrew, 1. But it didn’t come easy. “I’m not gonna lie,” the 48-year-old actress and former beauty queen (she was crowned Miss Beverly Hills!) told Good Housekeeping earlier this year, “there were wrenching moments. I say to everybody, ‘Adoption is not for the faint of heart.’” The process of getting the two kids took more than two years, but for Hargitay, the idea of adopting was planted decades ago. “I remember being in Thailand and India when I was 9 or 10 and seeing kids alone in the street and thinking, ‘Where are their moms?’ They were so amazingly resourceful and soulful and smart. And somewhere inside of me—even so young—I had that maternal instinct. I remember thinking, ‘I want to take them all home!’”

Sharon Stone’s got her hands full with three men in her life—adopted sons Roan, 11, Laird, 6 (pictured, left), and Quinn (pictured, right), 5. Her decision to adopt came after several miscarriages. “The last time I lost the baby, I went into 36 hours of labor,” the 54-year-old actress told AARP earlier this year. “While we were at the hospital, our adoption attorney called. I thought, ‘This is such a godsend. This is so right.’ I always thought I would adopt. Even when I was young, I used to look up how to adopt. I’m loving raising my kids.”

Angelina Jolie’s brood of six with Brad Pitt includes three children they’ve adopted: Maddox, 10, from Cambodia; Zahara, 7, from Ethopia; and Pax, 8, from Vietnam. And the Jolie-Pitts are all about ensuring that their uber-international clan knows exactly where they came from. “They are all learning about each other’s cultures, as well as being proud of their own,” Jolie, 37, told the Financial Times last year about the globe-trotting family’s regular visits to their kids’ homelands. “So it’s not like just the boys get to do the Asian thing. They all have their flags over their beds and their individual pride.”

Nearly 20 years before she welcomed Sunday Rose and Faith with husband Keith Urban, Nicole Kidman adopted two children with then-husband Tom Cruise—Isabella, now 20, and Connor, now 17—reportedly after several miscarriages. After the couple split in 2001, the kids, then preteens, were estranged from their mother. “They live with Tom, which was their choice,” the 45-year-old Australian beauty told the UK’s Hello! magazine in 2010. “I’d love them to live with us, but what can you do?”

Shortly before her split with philandering husband Jesse James, Sandra Bullock fell head over heels with a new man—baby boy Louis Bardo Bullock, now 2. Adopting Louis in New Orleans, Bullock underwent the same process every would-be adoptive parent goes through. “It was a long process. I did not circumvent,” the glowing actress, 48, the TODAY show in 2010. “I wanted to do everything exactly the same way everyone else did. … It was nice to have someone say, ‘I think you’re a fit parent.’ Everything works out the way the universe wants it to work out.”

Singer-songwriter Sheryl Crow, 50 is mom to two boys she adopted solo: Wyatt, 4, and Levi, 1. “Things always work out perfectly,” the 50-year-old Nashville resident told Redbook of adopting her second son last year. “They just do. Generally, when you let go of your vision of how something is supposed to be, the universe hands you exactly what you need.” Her advice? “There will never seem like a great time to do it—just like when you’re married, it never seems like the perfect time to have a baby,” said the chic and stylish singer. So you dive in and make your life work.”

Nothing Madonna does veers far from controversy (remember those crazy bras?!)—and her 2005 adoption of son David from Malawi was no exception. The country was in a state of emergency when the singer—who was there filming a documentary called _I Am Because We Are—_brought the then-1-year-old boy home, and his father later came a-calling to reclaim him. “I assure you, it doesn’t matter who you are or how much money you have, nothing goes fast in Africa,” Madonna—already mom to Lourdes, now 15, and Rocco, now 12—told Oprah at the time. “And I was warned by my social worker that because there were no known [adoption] laws in Malawi, they were more or less going to have to make them up as we went along.” The 54-year-old mom ended up being able to keep her son, now 7, and in 2009 adopted a Malawi girl, Mercy (pictured), now 6.

In 2009, Katherine Heigl and her singer husband Josh Kelley adopted then-10-month old Naleigh from South Korea. And recently, Heigl, 33, admitted that she was initially rejected by her new baby girl, who quickly bonded with dad instead. “I fought very hard to be accepted as a mom by my daughter,” Heigl told the German newspaper Bild am Sonntag earlier this year. “Her rejection almost broke my heart.” Heigl first coped by throwing herself into her work, but realized that wouldn’t help the situation. “The minute I realized [that], I immediately stopped working so much,” said Heigl, who quit Grey’s Anatomy to spend time with the baby. “The reward [of adopting] is so great.”

Already mom to Sam, 8, and Lola, 7, her daughters with ex husband Charlie Sheen, Denise Richards adopted baby Eloise, now 13 months, last July. “I’ve always wanted more children and I had to make a decision: Do I wait to find the right partner, or do I do it on my own?” the former model, 41, said on The View at the time. “So I just did it on my own.” The process, she revealed, was two years long. And Eloise’s big sisters are totally on board. “Sami and Lola help so much and pick out her clothes and feed her.”

Earlier this year, Charlize Theron, 37, adopted infant son Jackson after years of waiting. “My mom said the most beautiful thing,” the stunning actress told Ellen in May. “She said, ‘It took me nine months to fall in love with you when you were growing in my stomach.’ She’s like, ‘It took you two years to fall in love with this little baby.’ … It really took two years of just waiting and then one day, it’s finally there. It just feels exactly how it’s supposed to feel. I don’t know how to describe it. It just feels right.”

Last year was a stellar one for Viola Davis—who earned an Oscar nod and became a first-time mom to daughter Genesis, now 2, whom she adopted last October with husband Julian Tennon. “Becoming a mother has opened up my whole life and given me a whole new purpose,” the 47-year-old actress told People in December. “I feel like a star at home only because she loves me so much. I mean, it’s red carpet every day! It’s wonderful!”

Already mom to daughter Gaia, now 12, in 2006, in 2006, Emma Thompson felt that maternal tug again—and adopted a then-16-year-old Rwandan refugee, Tindy, whom Thompson and her husband Greg Wise took in to prevent him from being deported back to his homeland, where his entire family had been murdered. “His experience had been awful and when he finally got to England after tremendous suffering, the Home Office didn’t believe him,” the 53-year-old actress told the Brit paper the Telegraph in 2006. “He spent two nights sleeping rough in Trafalgar Square before they finally did. It was the only time he considered suicide.” Now, she said, “he’s family. He calls me mum.”

In 2001, 36 and single, Calista Flockhart decided to become a mom, adopting son Liam, now 10. Naturally, a few months later, she met the love of her life, Harrison Ford, while spilling a drink on him at a party. Already a father of four, Ford embraced Flockhart and her son with open arms. “She’s brought a child back into my home,” Ford told Reader’s Digest in 2009. “It’s a wonderful opportunity to be a part of a child’s growing up, which is always an endless springtime. You see the blossoming and the growing and the nurturing and the payoff.”

After years of waiting on a baby, fitness guru Jillian Michaels, 38, and her longtime partner, Heidi Rhoades, finally became parents—to two! Nope, not twins. The pair adopted 2-year-old Lukensia in late April, and then Rhoades gave birth to son Phoenix just days later. “We’re swimming in babies over here,” she told People earlier this year. “I don’t even answer email. I don’t have time to care about anything else. I really want to be present and enjoy all the nuances of their growth and development. I don’t want to rush any of it.”