Addiction or Abuse (Drugs, Alcohol or Gambling)
Harry, Deborah
Harry was adopted aged three months. Her family includes a born-to sister and a cousin who lived with her parents. She spent most of her twenties working at odd jobs, including spells as... [more]
Head, Bessie
Head was the child of a wealthy white South African woman and a Black servant when interracial relationships were illegal in South Africa. Her mother was sent to a mental hospital as punish... [more]
Hitler, Adolf
Among documents reportedly seized from Hitler's Munich home after World War II is a curious paper, apparently emanating after 1940 from the Gestapo. It suggests that he was the illegitimate... [more]
Jacobs, Peter
Jacobs' entire immediate family died while he was a young child and he grew up poor and alone. He converted to Christianity about 1827 and became an interpreter for Methodist missionarie... [more]
Kean, Edmund
Kean was the son of a poverty-stricken actress, Ann Carey, who more or less abandoned him on the streets, and (probably) an architect's clerk, Edmund Kean, who committed suicide when he was... [more]
La Marr, Barbara
La Marr was born Reatha Watson in central Washington state, but her parents moved to California when she was very young. She left home at the age of 14 and never returned, making a living a... [more]
Louganis, Gregory E.
Louganis is of Samoan-Swedish ancestry and was adopted when a few months old by a white couple who also adopted another child. He began competitive diving when he was 10. He had a troubled ... [more]
Monroe, Marilyn
Born Norma Jean Baker to an unmarried woman, Monroe was fostered from babyhood until about the age of seven, because her mother was working and not well enough to care for her as well. Duri... [more]
O'Connor, Hugh
O'Connor was born in Rome and adopted by the famous American actor Carroll O'Connor (All in the Family) and his wife while he was in Rome in acting in the 1963 film Cleopatra, with Richard ... [more]
Plato, Dana Michelle
Dana Plato's was the stereotypical life of a child star who couldn't make the transition to adult acting. She was the second child of a young unmarried birthmother who relinquished her for ... [more]
