15 Celebs Who Overcame Traumatic Childhoods

Oprah is one of the most famous women in the world and one of the richest people in America. She's come a long way from the poverty of her childhood and she has been open for years about the fact that she was sexually abused as a child. She's also bravely shared that she became pregnant at the age of 14 and lost that child while he was an infant. Some credit her traumatic childhood for the empathy she often displayed to her talk show guests.

Marshall Mathers, better known as the rapper Eminem, had a childhood that was filled with tramua. His father wasn't present in his life, and he and his mother — whom he claims suffers from Munchausen by proxy syndrome — moved frequently so he had very little stability in his home life. He's also recounted several stories of being bullied and assualted as a child and teenager, including some stories that ended up serving as the basis for his music like the song Brain Damage.

Actress Charlize Theron, who was born in South Africa, witnessed the almost unimaginable as a teenager. Her mother shot and killed her father in front of her. Her father had been drunk and was physically attacking her mother, so the shooting was ruled an act of self-defense but was still a horrific trauma for young Charlize to witness.

Like so many other celebrities on this list, Christina Aquilera's early years were impacted by the violence of her father. She has described her father as both physically and emotionally abusive to both herself and her mother, who ultimately would divorce him and leave when Christina was just 6 years old.

The iconic supermodel Iman has been known for decades as one of the most beautiful women in the world. What many fans may not realize is that while she was born to successful parents (her father was a diplomant and her mother a doctor), political unrest in her home country of Somalia meant that she spent much of her childhood seperated from her parents. Iman was either at boarding school in Eygpt or with extended family in Kenya, where her family was eventually forced to flee because of continued instablity in Somalia.

Demi Moore's early life was shaped by two main factors: instability and alcohol. She's shared that both her mother and the stepfather who raised her were heavy drinkers and that by the age of 14, she'd moved 30 times, making it hard to form lasting relationships or make friends. By the time she was an adult, Demi lost her stepfather to suicide and was estranged from her mother, who has a lengthy list of arrests.

Jay-Z may be living the good life with Beyoncé now, but he certainly started from a more humble and hard-knocks place. He grew up in a housing project with a single mother after the family was abandoned by his father. While young, he was exposed to street violence, drug dealing, and crime. He has recounted that he was shot several times and even sold drugs himself before finding fame as a rapper.

While actress Leighton Meester seems to have had a largely stable childhood, the story of her birth is one that involves trauma. Her parents were both serving sentences for drug smuggling, so Leighton was actually born inside a prison and spent her first few months in a halfway house so her mother could nurse her before returning to complete her sentence.

Funnyman Chevy Chase is responsible for so many hilarious moments on Saturday Night Life and in movies like Caddyshack, but his childhood wasn't a laughing matter. In his autobiography, he shares that he was physically and psychologically abused by both his mother and stepfather as a child.

Writer, director, and actor Tyler Perry's childhood was so traumatic that he has shared that he contemplated suicide as child to escape the abuse he suffered from his father. In addition to physical abuse, he was also molested several times as a child and was not able to complete high school, though he would eventually earn his GED and find writing as a way to process his trauma.

Ashley Judd grew up with both early exposure to fame (thanks to the country music careers of her mother and sister Wynona) and abuse. In her 2011 autobiography All That Is Bitter and Sweet, she recounts being molested as a child but not being believed by the adults in her life. She also states that she saw her mother pull a gun on a man and that she moved frequently as her family members sought fame. She has said that she loves her mother and believes her mother loves her but that her family was rooted in dysfunctional systems that she is trying to break as an adult.

Actor Woody Harrelson grew up without much money or access to his father. His father was a convicted hitman who was sentenced to life in prison after killing a federal judge in 1979. Woody has described himself as being sensitive as a child and having a lot of anger issues from a young age that he struggled to deal with.

While much of actress Hilary Swank's early years were stable, she and her mother took a major risk when she was a teenager. Hilary, wanting to pursue acting, dropped out of high school, and she and her mother moved to Los Angeles. Before she found steady acting work, she and her mother were homeless and lived out of their car, something that is traumatic even if it was in pursuit of a bigger dream.

Another celebrity who experienced homelessness in their teen years is comedian Jim Carrey. As his family experienced financial struggles, they briefly lived out of a van and sometimes in tents. Jim and his brothers both worked as overnight janitors to help the family finances. He also dropped out of high school during this challenging time.

Kelsey Grammer was born in paradise (he's a native of the U.S. Virgin Islands) but his life has been marred by incredible losses. His father was murdered when Kelsey was only 13. A few years later, Kelsey's sister was kidnapped, raped, and murdered. He would then go on to lose two of his half-brothers at the same time in a scuba diving accident only a few years later. It is hard to imagine someone enduring that much loss, all before they found their calling as a successful actor.