8 Celebrities Who Grew Up Poor

The odds of becoming a wealthy, massively popular celebrity are minuscule no matter how you slice it, but some have the odds stacked significantly in their favor. For example, Adam Levine, the lead singer of Maroon 5, had the luxury of having a father who founded a retail chain. Bill Gates Sr., the father of the Microsoft founder who shares his name, was a successful, rich lawyer and civic leader in his own right. On the other hand, when somebody who comes from a broken home — or doesn’t have a home at all — makes it big, it’s a true rags-to-riches story that we can all get behind. Here are 8 such entertainment figures who went from zero to hundreds of millions.

Jay-Z

Rapper Jay-Z — born Shawn Carter — has been a huge deal for almost 2 decades. He is part-owner of the NBA’s Brooklyn Nets, owns a clothing line, a record label, and has a handful of hits. Oh, and he’s married to Beyoncé who’s a force in her own right. But while Jay-Z is worth $800 million today (plus another quarter of a billion dollars if you include his wife’s net worth), when he was growing up in the projects of Brooklyn, he was selling crack to make ends meet.

Eminem

When Eminem (Marshall Mathers) was a young child, his parents were in a small-time band called Daddy Warbucks, performing at hotels in farflung towns in Montana and the Dakotas. His dad left the family and moved to California, and Eminem and his mom frequently moved around from town to town in Missouri and Michigan before finally settling in Detroit, where they were among the only white households in a Black majority area of the city. Eminem got held back in 9th grade three times due to poor grades and truancy. He dropped out of school at 17 and worked several jobs to support himself and his mom. These days he lives a life of luxury with a net worth of $230 million.

Jim Carrey

Carrey grew up in the suburbs of Toronto and at one point his parents experienced financial struggles serious enough to leave them homeless for a period of time. They lived in a Volkswagen van and even in tents at a local park along the shores of Lake Ontario. As a teenager, Carrey and his brother John worked as security guards and janitors at a tire factoring, doing 6pm-2am shifts. Eventually, Jim realized he had what it took to make a living through stand-up comedy. He promised his father that once he became rich, he would write him out a check for one million dollars. Sadly, the elder Carrey died of lung cancer just as his son started commanding millions for his movies. But he kept his promise. He wrote out a million-dollar check and placed it in his dad’s coffin.